The Psychological and Social Benefits of Naturism: A Research Overview

Welcome to NaturismRE, where we celebrate the harmony of body and nature. Over the years, scientific research has explored the psychological and social benefits of naturism, consistently finding positive outcomes in areas like body image, self-esteem, and overall life satisfaction. These studies offer valuable insights into how naturist practices can foster well-being and provide a sense of community. Below, we summarise key studies and their findings, highlighting both positive and nuanced perspectives on naturism.

Naked and Unashamed (2018)

Author(s): Keon West

This research comprised three studies, showing that participation in naturist activities predicts greater life satisfaction, mediated by improved body image and higher self-esteem. The findings were validated through both large-scale surveys and prospective interventions.

A Nudity-Based Intervention to Improve Body Image (2020)

Author(s): Keon West

A four-day nudity-based intervention with participants who had low positive body image showed substantial and enduring improvements in body image, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.

Good Nudes and Bad Nudes (2022)

Author(s): Keon West and Eliza Kukawska

This study differentiated between forms of public nudity. Naturism was linked to positive outcomes like increased body appreciation and reduced social physique anxiety, while other forms like sexting had less beneficial or even negative effects.

Social Nudism and the Body Taboo (1933)

Author(s): Howard C. Warren

An early exploration into social nudism, suggesting it reduces body taboos and promotes a healthier acceptance of the human body.

A Haptic Geography of the Beach (2008)

Author(s): Pau Obrador-Pons

This study examined the sensory experiences of naturists on beaches, showing how nudity enhances engagement with nature and fosters a deeper connection with one's body.

Think of the Children! (2022)

Author(s): Various Authors

Investigated claims about naturism’s impact on children, finding no empirical evidence of negative effects. However, societal stigma around nudity persists and may influence public perceptions.

Freikörperkultur (Free Body Culture)

Wikipedia source:

Freikörperkultur (FKK) is a social and health culture that originated in the German Empire; its beginnings were historically part of the Lebensreform social movement in the late 19th century.Freikörperkultur, which translated as 'free body culture', includes both the health aspects of being naked in light, air and sun and an intention to reform life and society. It is partly identified with the culture of nudity, naturism and nudism in the sense of communal nudity of people and families in leisure time, sport and everyday life.

By the 20th century the culture of communal open air nudity in the "great outdoors" and its benefits to public health blossomed in Germany as an alternative to the stresses and anxieties of Industrial Age urban life. Today, there are only a few legal restrictions on public nudity in Germany. Under the terms "naturism" and "nudism", it is now internationally widespread, with associations and designated public recreational environments in numerous countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean; the largest distribution is still found in German-speaking countries and Scandinavia.

In general

Definition

Freikörperkultur-inspired naturism is defined as an attitude and way of life by the International Naturist Federation as follows:

The practice of communal nudity is an essential characteristic of naturism, making, as it does, the maximum use of the natural agents of sun, air and water. It restores one's physical and mental balance through being able to relax in natural surroundings, by exercise and respect for the basic principles of hygiene and diet. It encourages many activities that develop one's creativity. Complete nudity is the most suitable clothing for getting back to nature, and is certainly the most visible aspect of naturism, even if it is not the only one. It exerts a steadying and balancing influence on human beings, freeing them from the stresses caused by the taboos and provocations of today's society and shows the way to a more simple, healthy and human way of life

— Definition of the International Naturist Federation (INF/FNI) from the Cap d'Agde World Congress, 1974

Content

Behind the Freikörperkultur movement is an attitude towards life, according to which the naked body is no reason for feelings of shame.[3] The communally practiced nudity of the Freikörperkultur is often experienced in this sense as liberating and goes hand in hand with mutual acceptance and a positive body image.[6][7] The focus is on enjoying nature, being nude or the realization of freedom. The nudity of naturism has no sexual relation. Nudity on the beach and in water, in comparison to wearing swimsuits, is accompanied with a different body surface sensation, which is mostly experienced as pleasant. In the sense of nudity propagated by the Freikörperkultur it does not address sexuality and is not directly related to it.

In the context of the Freikörperkultur, mostly bathing, sunbathing on bathing lakes or beaches (the "nudist beaches"), sports and other leisure activities are practiced nude. In numerous designated holiday resorts, campsites, country parks and sports club facilities the praxis of the Freikörperkultur are also applied. Nudists and naturists are organized in national and international nudist or naturism associations.

Nudity in intimate situations, as well as purely practical nudity such as in the shower or in the sauna, do not involve the Freikörperkultur. This nudity does not require a special group consensus.

History

Freilicht (Open Air) by German painter and photographer Max Friedrich Koch, ca. 1894: Early German nudists outdoors engaging in the athletic sport tug of war. One of many themed Freilicht photos by Max Koch depicting nudists outdoors.

By far the most extensive collection on the historical and current situation of the Freikörperkultur (Naturism), the International Naturist Library (formerly the Damm - Baunatal Collection), is located in the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History in Hanover, Germany.

Background

In public bathhouses, even in the Middle Ages, people bathed in the nude, although moral or (with regard to disease transmission) medical concerns were occasionally expressed. In many parts of central Europe up until the 18th century, people bathed naked in rivers and lakes, albeit often separated by gender. Beginning in the late 18th century, public nudity became increasingly taboo, which was never enforced in the sparsely populated Scandinavia. At the same time, the Scottish judge Lord Monboddo (1714–1779) practised and preached unclothed "air-baths" for health and as a revival of Ancient Greek attitudes toward nudity. It found literary mention in Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's (1742–1799) book Das Luftbad (the air-bath).

As early as 1853 the Swiss naturopath Arnold Rikli founded a "solar sanatorium" (Sonnenheilanstalt) and prescribed his patients the heliotherapy of unclothed outdoor "light-baths" (Lichtbäder) as a treatment for tuberculosis, rickets, seasonal affective disorder and other health or skin disorders. In 1906 there were also 105 so-called "air-bath" sanatoriums (Luftbäder) in Germany; unclothed exposure to outdoor air, as a treatment for being cooped-up in unventilated, warm rooms, which allegedly led to "softening", heat build-up in the body, headaches, nausea and circulatory disorders. The idea of the therapeutic unclothed air-bath, was connected with that of the light-bath, in the early 20th century, for example by the pastor and naturopath Emanuel Felke.

With the battle cry "Back to Nature" the advocates of the nude culture (Nacktkultur) declared war on the compulsory morality of a society that, in their eyes, had become neurotic and sick. "We don't want to deny it: for the people of our time, a naked person is tasteless and looks like a slap in the face - that's how unnatural we have become," wrote Heinrich Pudor in 1893, one of the early pioneers of the free body culture naturist movement in the German Empire.

The painter and social reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913), who practiced Freikörperkultur with his students in the Höllriegelskreuth hermitage near Munich and later on the Himmelhof near Vienna, is considered the real pioneer of naturism, namely outside of clinical-medical treatments.

"Nude culture" and the Life-reform (Lebensreform) movement – up to World War I

Main article: Lebensreform

In 1898 the first official Freikörperkultur (FKK) association was founded in Essen, Germany. Around 1900, nude bathing in the Berlin area and on the German North and Baltic Sea coast became more popular.A few years earlier, common bathing in public—even in the swimsuits of that time period—had been officially banned or was considered immoral in many places.

The first official Freikörperkultur association in Germany was founded in 1898 in the Ruhr area, although the centre of nude bathing has always been on the coast and around the liberal, adventurous Berlin.

With political liberalization, conservative circles challenged the nude bathing which had become popular among urban intellectuals, seeing them as a corruption of morality.

Naturism between World War I and World War II

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Illustration by Heinrich Zille (1858–1929), titled "As the outdoor public swimming pool appeared", postcard print 1919

After the First World War, Freikörperkultur (FKK) associations were increasing in Germany. After the first official nudist beach on Sylt Island was established in Germany in 1920, most of the FKK-associations joined together in 1923 to form the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Bünde deutscher Lichtkämpfer" (Working Group of the Leagues for German Light Campaigners) and from 1925 they published a monthly journal in Berlin called "Leben und Sonne" (Life and Sun).From 1926 the working group was renamed the "Reichsverband für Freikörperkultur" (Imperial Association for Free Body Culture). The socialist groups united separately under the name "Freie Menschen. Bund für sozialistische Lebensgestaltung und Freikörperkultur" (Free People. Association for socialist Lifestyle and Free Body Culture) with approximately 70,000 members in 1932. In 1930 representatives from England, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Italy and Germany met in Frankfurt am Main and later founded a European league for Naturism. The first dissertation about the FKK movement was written in the 1930s.

In 1933 after the Nazi Party came to power, nudist organizations were initially banned or integrated into Nazi organizations.

One of the greatest dangers for German culture and morality is the so-called nudity movement. Greatly as it is to be welcomed in the interest of the public health, that ever wider circles, especially of the metropolitan population, are striving to make the healing power of sun and air and water serviceable to their body, as greatly must the so-called nudity movement be disapproved of as a cultural error. Among women the nudity kills natural modesty; it takes from men their respect for women, and thereby destroys the prerequisite for any genuine culture. It is therefore expected of all police authorities that, in support of the spiritual powers developed through the national movement, they take all police measures to destroy the so-called nude culture. Hermann Göring, 1933 Nazi edict

On 3 March 1933, the Prussian Ministry of Interior issued a circular to "combat the nudist movement". But with the support of Hans Surén [de] (a former German military officer, manager and instructor at the German Army School of Physical Education in Wünsdorf), the Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture Walter Darré and, in the end, with strength in the paramilitary SS, Freikörperkultur found new supporters again. Some sources state that Himmler and the SS supported naturism. The first naturist Olympic Games took place in Thielle in Switzerland in August 1939. In the German Reich, the ban on nude bathing was relaxed by the Reich Ordinance of 10 July 1942, provided nobody had to see it. (This remained valid in the West Germany until the 1960s, and in East Germany until 1990.) During the National Socialist era there was also a "racial nude culture", the best-known representative of which was the sport campaigner and author Hans Surén, who glorified the body ideals of the National Socialists, and would later become an honorary member of the Deutscher Verband für Freikörperkultur (DFK) (German Association for Free Body Culture). In 1940 the first color picture books appeared with depictions of martial nudity, such as work by the sculptor Arno Breker.

From 1945 to present

In 1949, the Deutscher Verband für Freikörperkultur (DFK; German Association for Free Body Culture) was founded, which today is a member of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) with special tasks for popular sports in nude recreation and the largest member of the International Naturist Federation (INF).

The first naturist holiday resorts were opened around 1950 in France (Centre-Hélio-Marin in Montalivet-les-Bains, Aquitaine, France).

The nude beach in Kampen on the island of Sylt in Germany was particularly popular due to extensive media coverage. FKK resorts in Yugoslavia, France and on the Baltic Seacoast became popular holiday places. Naturist organizations gained many new members in the 1960s.

FKK-inspired naturism in Germany continued to be particularly popular in East Germany after the Second World War, possibly because of a more secular cultural development. It had ties to the workers' movement and became a symbol for people and families to escape a repressive state. Beach culture was often intermixed – nude and dressed people would swim together and nudity was widely tolerated and considered neither unusual nor sensational.In the later decades of the 20th century, naturism became very popular outside Germany.

One popular form of Freikörperkultur recreation is Nacktwanderung, translated as "nude hiking", where a walking group will collectively tour through the open countryside, which is possible in Germany due to the liberal laws on non-sexual public nudity. This attitude does extend to Austria, where FKK culture enjoys a high degree of public acceptance, but not to the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland where nude recreation is usually regulated to designated FKK outdoor public spaces.