In 1981 and '82 my wife and I lived in Barcelona. The summer of 1981 was hot and humid, and Sandy and I walked for miles every day, exploring our new city. The combination of heat, humidity, and the friction of clothes on those long walks caused me to get my first heat rash in the groin, which became quite painful. Fortunately, a pharmacist was able to give me an anti-fungal cream that took care of it. I had to use it periodically the rest of the time we were there. The problem was that, under those conditions of heat, humidity, and friction, my body was not sufficiently aerated,
It's ironic, but Barcelona is now one of the few cities in the world where you can simply walk around naked, anywhere. But it wasn't that way then. There were a few nude beaches in Sitges, about an hour away by train. All of us, women and men, could be topless on any beach, but you had to be covered up "down there." Actually, I was once shirtless in a park, and was told by a policeman to cover up. A lot of personal liberty came with the EU, and I hope they don't lose that.
Sandy and I have lived in many places. One of them, where we lived for six years, was Uruguay. It's a small country (3.4 million population), secular, and tolerant. You can't walk around Montevideo naked (so far as I know--I've never tried), but the country does have two legal nude beaches and a few informal ones. Our beach house was about a mile and a half away from one of the legal naturist beaches. By law, women can be topless on any beach in Uruguay, but few do. Why? The usual reason: social attitudes have to catch up with permissive laws.
At present, Sandy and I are living in the naturist capital of the USA, Pasco County, Florida. But that doesn't mean I can walk around naked on public streets. It's not a matter of laws (where we live there are clothing-optional neighborhoods, we just don't happen to live in one of them) but, again, it's about social attitudes. Non-sexual nudity must be normalized for it to become accepted. We have a lot of work to do to achieve that.
In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy the physical and mental health benefits of nudity and body acceptance right here at home. It's a matter of human welfare (in this case my own) and human rights.
Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.
