Today, most of us live busy lives. We’re commuting to full-time jobs, going to colleges classes, spending hours posting and chatting on social media, doing errands, etc. When the majority of Americans go home, they’re still wearing their clothes. Most textiles are wearing pajamas or underwear to bed. They wear a towel to cover up when going to the shower. This is all foreign to nudists. When we get home, we want to enjoy life naturally. Those of us with spouses, kids, and nudist friends are used to everyone in the home being nude. That’s normal. Unfortunately, most of us can’t just walk out the door and grab the mail or mow the lawn nude. Our neighbors would report us to the police and we’d get cited for indecency. Is that really the kind of country we want to live in? No, but change takes time. It would be a big step forward if outdoor nudity was allowed on our own property across the country. Ideally, you could walk to the mailbox, host a pool party, mow the lawn, paint your house, garden, or hold a BBQ with everyone being nude.

How can the nudist community in the US begin to improve things? We can start by contributing guest articles about nudism on mainstream sites, create blogs with great photos and articles, organize petitions to get laws changed, stop posting our nudist photos with emojis and blank spots on our faces, put up lawn signs/door magnets/window stickers with the international naturist symbol to indicate that we have nudist households, open private naturist parks, and create new video programs and podcasts revolving around nudism. That may sound like a lot but you could do just one of those things to start with. The nudist community also needs to address the problem of almost all nudist social media sites being 18+. One of the keys to the future of nudism in this country is involving teens in our online and offline communities. We need to include them in our overall conversation and allow them to participate in the nudist experience. Of course, this means that our online communities will need stricter moderation. Our natural lifestyle is for all ages and backgrounds. If we want to grow nudism in America, we need to be more public with it and engage with those seeking a more natural life.

The post The State of American Nudism appeared first on Natural Nomad.

Joining subreddits is the easy part when it comes to becoming a member of particular Reddit communities. The hard part is sorting the real naturists from the posers. To start with, you might want to try subreddits like r/NakedAdventures, r/naturism, r/naturists, r/NudistMeetup, and r/nudists. These particular communities offer a space where you can share your naturist photos, videos, and experiences. The people posting come from different places, backgrounds, and age groups. Generally speaking, posters are mostly Caucasian and around their 20s to 50s. Remember, naturism/nudism is what YOU make it. If you are part of a different demographic and want to see more representation online, you should make the difference yourself. Don’t wait for someone else to do it. I can guarantee there are other people from a similar background to you who have thought about posting a natural picture of themselves but decided not to. If you put yourself out there, that might be what it takes for that procrastinator to join one of these communities and share their naturist life.

What’s next? Join some of the communities I mentioned above on Reddit. Make sure you read the rules for each subreddit in the column on the right hand side. Some spaces are more focused on pictures. Other spaces want more of a mix between picture posts and text posts. Your posts should always be non-sexual and not focused on one part of the body. The idea is that you are going to share a moment or lesson from your all natural life with interested folks. Remember, stay positive. You are showing others that the clothes-free lifestyle is the way to go. There are so many possibilities for sharing photos of yourself on Reddit. You could be at home, at the beach, hiking, in a lake, in a pool, over a friend’s BBQ, lounging at a nudist resort, and many other places. By sharing moments from your nude life, you’ll be supporting the movement towards society becoming more tolerant towards nudity. There aren’t nearly enough places where you can be nude in public. By sharing pictures and videos of ourselves enjoying our happy and free lifestyle, we can show the textile world that nudism is wholesome and healthy.

Next, I’d like to talk about interaction on these subs. If you are familiar with Reddit, you know that a large part of this site is using the upvote or downvote feature on posts. If I see an authentic naturist post on one the subs I follow, I will upvote it. If I see a fake naturist post, I downvote it. For example, it might be a user who posts a seemingly innocent nude photo of themselves in the woods. But if you click on their profile, you see that it is from a shoot that has a sexual theme and they mention in another post that you should pay to see their OnlyFans. Another example of a less than sincere post on a strictly naturist sub would be a guy who posts a shot of just their erection. That gets an automatic downvote and I block their profile. As a viewer looking at other posts, you should be asking yourself one basic question: “Is this post an authentic view of the naturist lifestyle that positively adds to our community?” This isn’t rocket science. If a woman posts her nude photo in the naturist hiking section and mentions that she was feeling slutty, this is a faker. If a guy posts his nude photo in an outdoor nudist section but he is fully erect, this is a faker. In my opinion, you should downvote these posts and block the user. You should also make a determination on how you approach posts by people who seem to be legit nudists but who blur or put an emoji on their face. It is my opinion that these types of posts do not help the nudist cause at all. I would rather see the posts where the head isn’t showing than an emoji pasted on their face.

The second part of this has to do with commenting and chats. I would certainly encourage you to comment on posts you see from genuine nudists. If you only upvote pictures, that only goes so far in terms of interaction. Talking with other nudists on these subs helps bring our worldwide community together. You never know who you might meet. They could become your best nudist friend. There are also nudists looking to meet up and hang out. You might just happen to be vacationing or on a trip where they live. Keep your eyes open and talk with others to make friends. On a personal note, I often run into the phenomenon of real nudists ghosting me on chat when trying to set up a meeting or collaboration. It’s going to happen. You can either stay connected to their profile or disconnect. Often, you will get people making really inappropriate comments on your uploaded shots. You will need to decide what you are and aren’t comfortable with. Unfortunately, you will also get random creeps sending you gross chat messages. You might also get benign messages. But when you click on their profile, you see it is full of nasty stuff. I just block them right away. That takes care of that problem. Reddit makes it easy to block people. If you do this on a weekly basis, it will really help clean up your feed.

Lastly, when thinking about joining a specific sub on Reddit, make sure to look over everything on their page. There should be a summary on the upper right which describes how they see their community. This “about” section will tell you what kind of posts they want and what they don’t want on there. Check at the bottom of this box to see how many users the community has overall and the number of members currently on. If the group has been around for ten years and has 300 users, there’s not going to be a lot of activity. For instance, r/nudists has been around for over 12 years and has more than 57,000 members. That is a very active community. Some of the nudist communities will let you tag your posts as [OC] which means original content. This indicates to viewers that you didn’t upload a nude pic of someone else. Of the subs that I listed earlier, you can choose to tag your post with flair. This is a descriptive tag that has been designed for the nudist community. Examples could be male, female, couple, video, vintage, state, country, etc. If you are in Nudist Meetup and are a woman in France looking for a female friend nearby, you could tag your post with the France option. When people are looking at new posts on that feed, they will see that your post is tagged with France. As I said earlier, you should also review the rules of a sub. These are also listed on the right side. Some groups have strict rules and others don’t. Most real nudist communities will clearly state that no sexual posts are allowed. When you post on these subs, you should act like you are representing nudism. That means sharing your natural life in a truthful and positive way. It might be scary to put yourself out there as a nudist. But you’re not alone. There are millions of others in our worldwide community. In order to fully embrace your nudist identity, post your photos and videos showing your face. It will help others to do the same and show the public that nudism is natural and healthy. Good luck!

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