Nudism is a word that can be heard quite often today in everyday life or in the media. However, not everyone knows what it is; and those who think they know have a very dubious idea of him. Let's try to figure out what nudism is.
Naturism
To understand the meaning of the word, first it is worth saying a few words about what "naturism" is. This word is even less understood and heard much less often. However, it denotes a way of life that chooses unity with nature with its philosophy (from the Latin natura, which means “nature”).
Naturism is a whole social movement, it is represented even under the auspices of UNESCO in the form of the International Naturism Federation (INF - International Naturism Federation), founded in 1953. Naturism involves many practices, and only one of the few used within its framework is nudism (from Latin nudus - “naked”), which provides for a naked lifestyle.
It is worth noting that nudism itself does not include the entire philosophy of naturism. Moreover, many of those who only learn what nudism is and join it, in generalare not guided in any way by signs of movement, but are exposed from any other motives. From all this, it should be concluded that it is not quite correct to identify the concept of "naturism" and the word "nudism" in speech and texts. However, many media outlets do just that, using a word familiar to most thanks in large part to scandalousness.
From history
As always, when you want to figure it out, in order to do it correctly, let's turn to history. Even in ancient times, nudity was of a religious, sacred, mystical nature. The ancient Greeks were naked for gymnastics, wrestling and other sports exercises, and the cult of sports, as we know from the history of the Olympic Games, was extremely important in Greece: after all, it was dedicated to the gods of Olympus themselves!
Nearly naked and fought. In the surviving monuments of antiquity, we find images of naked or half-naked athletes and warriors.
Even in the time of Alexander the Great, even though the word “nudism”, the meaning of which we are considering, was still not in sight, the Greeks in a special way singled out Indian ascetics who practiced nudity as a symbol of renunciation of mortal life. They called them "gymnosophists", that is, translating each Greek root, "naked sages"
The tradition of nudity and chanting of the naked human body began to gradually fade away with the advent of a new era and the spread of Christianity throughout Europe: the theory of human innate sinfulness condemned nudity and, as a result, tabooed corporality.
Culture returns to "nature" infine arts of the Renaissance. What are Michelangelo's relief sculptures and the detailed musculature of the heroes of his paintings and paintings of his contemporaries worth!
Nudism of our days
The origin of nudism, as such, took place in Germany. The starting point can be considered the appearance of two books by Heinrich Pudor about nudity: “Naked people. The jubilation of the future "and" The cult of nudity. They focused on the Nordic race. Perhaps that is why they became widespread mainly among the military society of the times of Nazi Germany. The development of nudism continued after the Second World War in the GDR, subsequently, going beyond the boundaries of one country and gradually beginning to spread throughout Europe and the world.
In Russia, they learned about what nudism was at the beginning of the 20th century. Its main ideologist at one time was the famous writer Maximilian Voloshin. Also at the dawn of the USSR, nudism was quite popular. Lenin himself saw the “proletarian beginning” in the concept of exposure.
Practice Nudism
So, what is nudism is now clear. How is it practiced? Despite the fact that nudists advocate a nude lifestyle, they do not deny the need to exist within the ethical and aesthetic boundaries established in society. That is why special beaches and venues are being created for holding the appropriate kind of events, so as not to infringe on people who are not involved in the practice of nudism.
However, people with good intentions do not always come to nudist beaches. Sometimes voyeurs, exhibitionists and other people with unhe althy tendencies or mental disorders, as well as people taking photos of nudism, mix with the crowd.
Pros and cons of nudism
It goes without saying that the practice of nudism has both positive and negative consequences. So, psychological self-improvement can be attributed to beneficial ones. Entering the environment of nudists allows you to get rid of the complexes associated with your own body, better and faster to accept your own physiology, learn to love your virtues and not pay attention to shortcomings. In addition, getting used to walking barefoot and lying naked on the textured surfaces of a sandy or rocky beach, a person gets used to new sensations with his skin: not only does he get a kind of “massage”, but also becomes more enduring.
On the negative side, one can distinguish that a naked person who spends a long time under the sun receives a significant dose of ultraviolet rays, therefore, the risk of oncological diseases increases. In this case, the main thing is not to overdo it with sunbathing. In addition, in many conservative cultures, even European ones, nudism is condemned as something depraved, shameful, not fitting into the established framework of what is acceptable and decent. And if in such countries nudism does not meet open resistance or hostility, then, in any case, it often reveals bewilderment and embarrassment in relation to itself.
