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"Sure, some people might believe they are offended by nude bathers, but, if you never encounter anything that offends you in your community, you are not living in a free society." - Corky Stanton
"In Style magazine, Kevin Bacon confesses he likes to cut a little footloose at home with his family every now and then -- naked. "Not when the nanny is around," he says. "But I will with my wife and kids." Why? "There's something therapeutic about nudity ... Take away the Gucci or Levi's and we're all the same."
"I believe that people have the right to their own beliefs. I do not feel people have got the right to stop me from expressing my beliefs by picking up the phone, calling the police and having me put in prison." - Steve Gough, who intends to walk from Land's end to John O'groats (the length of the British Isles) naked.
"The main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity. If people can't face up to the fact of other people being naked or smoking pot, or whatever they want to do, then we're never going to get anywhere. People have got to become aware that it's none of their business and that being nude is not obscene. Being ourselves is what's important. If everyone practiced being themselves instead of pretending to be what they aren't, there would be peace." - John Lennon
"To be offended by the visual appearance of another person is prejudice, akin to racism. The right to exist, uncovered, should hold precedence over the right not to view this, for the objection is irrational." - Terri Webb
"The best thing to do would be to designate everywhere as clothing optional, and we could leave little fenced in areas for the prudes to prance around in. Call them "Prudist Camps". They could peer out of their fences and indulge in their offensive "I'm offended" behavior whenever they saw a natural person walk by, without bothering the rest of us." - Anonymous
"To be offended by the visual appearance of another person is prejudice, akin to racism. The right to exist, uncovered, should hold precedence over the right not to view this, for the objection is irrational." - Terri Webb
Is it normal for us keep to our bodies covered in cloth 100% of the time? For some people, walking from the bathroom to the bedroom with no towel handy will cause them extreme panic and stress. Is this healthy? Being naked should just be another form of dress, nothing more, nothing less.
"Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity." - Dr. Lee Salk, Psychiatrist
Why would anyone want to teach their children their bodies are disgusting, unacceptable and offensive to even look at? Why would anyone want to teach their children self shame, self disgust and to despise their body or any one else's body? Why would anyone set a bad example to their children by having a prejudicial bigotry against another group of people?
"We was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us," Mark Twain's river hero Huck Finn.
Despite its puritan roots, the U.S. has a long history of skinny-dipping. Social nudity is celebrated in the writings of Walt Whitman and the landscape paintings of Thomas Eakins. Benjamin Franklin took a daily naked "air bath," while presidents John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson enjoyed a refreshing nude dip. According to National Geographic Magazine, John Quincy Adams (1825-29), the sixth President, customarily took a nude early morning swim in the Potomac River.
"Quoting from Genesis, "They were nude but they were not ashamed." Furthermore, because God created it, "The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendor and its beauty." - Pope John Paul II
"Because naturists don't think of sex when they undress, because naturists don't think of sex when they are engaged in wholesome family activities. Because naturists don't grab a towel for cover, after taking a shower in fear of having others view them in a 'sex obsessed' manner? Who are the perverts then? "
"Clothes therefore, must be the insignia of the superiority of man over all other animals, for surely there could be no other reason for wearing the hideous things." - From Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The best thing to do would be to designate everywhere as clothing optional, and we could leave little fenced in areas for the prudes to prance around in. Call them "Prudist Camps". They could peer out of their fences and indulge in their offensive "I'm offended" behavior whenever they saw a natural person walk by, without bothering the rest of us. "Are we so narrow minded that we show war, murder, rape, etc. on TV, but we do not allow to show one of the most wonderful creations (the human body) in its natural form." - Mario Roman
"I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience." - Shelley Winters
"Have you ever noticed how a little child can run naked through a room full of strangers without embarrassment? Just as Adam and Eve were not embarrassed in their innocence. But after Adam and Eve sinned, shame and awkwardness followed, creating barriers between themselves and God. Ideally we have no barriers, feeling no embarrassment between each other or God. But, like Adam and Eve, we put on fig leaves (barriers) because we have areas we don't want anyone or God to know about. Then we hide, just as Adam and Eve hid from God. Jesus died for our sins so there is no longer any barriers we need to have. Jesus told us to be like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
"If possible, compute in the nude. - From the book "Supercharging MS-Dos" by Microsoft Press, 3rd Ed., pg. 393, under the section "Static Electricity Is A Killer"
"I am not a naturist, a nudist, a streaker, nor an exhibitionist. Labels are for clothes. My unclothed appearance is also not motivated sexually nor out of any gratuitous need to seek attention. I believe that while society continues to have a fundamentally negative relationship with the human body and appearance, we can never be a free or mature society. It's the 21st century. Time to evolve." - Russell Higgs
Franklin, would you believe, was a practicing 18th century nudist! He took his "air baths" by sitting in the buff in front of an open window. President Adams regularly swam nude in the Potomac river. Anne Royall, a journalist, heard of Adam's early morning skinny dips. After being refused interviews with the President several times, she went to the river, gathered his clothes and sat on them until he agreed to speak to her. Before this, no woman journalist had ever interviewed a president. (Way to go, Annie!)
Fred Rogers, creator and star of the children's program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was 71 years old, has been married to his wife for 48 years, is an ordained Presbyterian minister, and took a morning swim every day in the nude.
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