Lena Dunham, Nude Appearance Broadens Definition of Beauty [Video]

Lena Dunham’s hit show Girls has been the topic of much discussion throughout its first three seasons. Most reviews seem to be either extremely in favor of, or extremely against the show, but in spite of mixed reactions, Girls has been maintaining a strong following. To many, Dunham’s “Hannah” is more than just a fictional character, she is representative of an archetype left out of most mainstream shows. Hannah Horvath does not have the perfect body, or say the right things; she is not the prettiest girl in the room. Because she does not meet the conventional standard of beauty, Dunham’s recent nude appearance on SNL has made her one of the pioneers in the fight to broaden the definition of beauty.

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Why are we naked?

There are lots of theories as to why we lost our fur, the two most commonly accepted are to reduce the parasite load that fur bearing animal carry and secondly to aid in our ability to hunt larger animals. Humans are not only one of the few mammals that are naked, but also one of the few mammals that sweat through the skin. The sweating through the skin gives us the ability to run long distances over long periods of time and to lose the body heat generated quickly and efficiently. Other mammals can only lose the heat generated through their mouths or paws. By picking and pursuing one weak individual in a herd, we could chase that animal till it literally fell over from heat exhaustion and we could club or spear it to death. Humans on the plains of Africa that still hunt this way, can pursue an animal all day long.9152702

So nakedness is part of our strategy for survival. Running with clothes on is a detriment to the chase because like our prey, we overheat. Our bodies are very effective at moderating temperature, we adjust to heat by sweating, to cold by shivering to keep warm, the hair on our heads is to protect us from the sun and the cold, but are bodies are meant to be naked.

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Top 10 tips for first time nakations

Planning on taking a nakation (nude vacation) for the first time? If you're going to shed your inhibitions -- and clothes -- on your next vacation, there are a few tips and rules you should follow. The American Association of Nude Recreation (AANR) has compiled a list of the 10 things first-time nakationers need to know.

See the slideshow for the tips, here

Pope Frank To Mothers In Sistine Chapel: Nurse Your Babies If You Need To

He's such a human being, isn't he? So nice to see such a sensible man as Pope!

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis baptized 32 babies in the Sistine Chapel on Sunday and told their mothers, including one who was married in a civil service rather than in church, to have no qualms about breastfeeding them there.

Unlike his predecessors, who usually delivered long and theology-laden homilies at the yearly baptism event, the pope offered a brief, improvised homily of some 300 words centered on the children.

"Today, the choir will sing, but the most beautiful choir of all is the choir of the infants who will make a noise. Some will cry because they are not comfortable or because they are hungry," he said in a familiar, relaxed tone to the parents.

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Salon - 6 reasons female nudity can be powerful

Last week, in the midst of what appears to be infinite fascination about Lena Dunham’s nudity, I saw a fundraiser for the documentary “Free the Nipple“ and also, by coincidence, talked to Facebook spokespeople about that company’s ban on visible female nipples. Like the reporter who recently asked Dunham why her “Girls” character was “often naked at random times for no reason,” many people seem confounded by expressions of female nudity that are not sexual – because isn’t titillation the whole point of women’s nakedness? The real question about female nudity isn’t why anyone would want to show or see women’s breasts if they’re not titillating. The real question is about who has the right to say what they’re for, where and when they can be seen and by whom. That’s about power.

While it’s irksome that the reporter questioning Dunham had to ask at all, it’s an important question. It revealed how little he, and so many others, has thought about a topic that affects all the women he’s ever known.

Why is exposing the world to non-sexualized female nudity important?

Full piece is here

WH petition gaining momentum

New stats on the WH petition asking the Obama Administration to: Designate portions of public lands under management of the federal government for clothing-optional recreational use. When this update was published, 102 awesome people had already signed the petition!

The ultimate goal of course is to get the requisite 100,000 signatures that will require an official response from policy makers. That will give the naturist/nudist community the best chance at obtaining fair and equitable access to our nation’s wilderness park lands, national forests and seashores.

But the immediate goal is to get as quickly as possible the first 150 signatures that will make the petition “searchable” on the “We the People” website. That’s important because it will raise awareness. Right now the only way people know about the petition is if they see and follow the link to it provided through social media outlets.

[LEARN MORE ————> Clothing-Optional Access] Click here

Designate portions of wilderness public lands under management of the National Parks Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service for clothing-optional recreational use.

We, the undersigned call for the establishment of officially designated, properly signed, clothing-optional recreation areas within the national parks, forests and other federally managed public lands to allow fair and equitable access to users who enjoy outdoor clothing-optional recreation, modeled after the successful and popular Gunnison Beach clothing-optional recreation area that is part of the Sandy Hook unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area managed by the NPS.

Understand the argument! Please visit http://clothing-optional-access.weebly.com

Created: Jan 13, 2014
Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Natural Resources, Regulatory Reform
Learn about Petition Thresholds
Signatures needed by February 12, 2014 to reach goal of 100,000
99,701
Total signatures on this petition
299

Want to feel better? Take it all off, as experts say sleeping nude has health benefits

The Yuletide season is upon us and though we all enjoy the festive holidays, they can dump a truck load of stress on our already over-wrought shoulders.

But experts say there is one sure-fire way we can feel better and that is to take it all off.

Yes, as in all the way down to our “birthday suits.” A recent study shows that sleeping naked has several health benefits, reports blackdoctors.org, but surprising statistics also reveal that only a few indulge is this wondrously freeing night ritual.

There I was thinking everyone slept in the nude like moi but alas it looks like Americans are more conservative than they let on for less than 10 percent reportedly slips between the sheets without their PJs or nighties.

But maybe after reading these pros for nudity, the cons will cease to exist.

Besides making you feel luxuriously sexy, which I will put as number one, sleeping naked can reportedly also do the following:

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Have a Happy Nude Year!

Nude Yoga

Commenter:

The images inspired me to embrace me! Their authenticity - stark beauty/ straight up nakedness - allowed me to connect with ME in a way that a lot of images create the experience of comparison for me. I saw these images and thought they were beautiful! The female body is BEAUTIFUL! Thank-you for sharing these intimate images and allowing me to get a step closer to embracing myself for ME!! xo

Source with Yoga

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Thought-Provoking Nude Photos That Challenge Conventional Ideas About Attractiveness

The media would have us believe that “attractive” and “unattractive” are fixed categories, and that all of humanity can be neatly sorted into one or the other. In practice, of course, beauty isn’t even a continuum; it is, as the cliché goes, in the eye of the beholder. And the images we see in mass culture of supposedly attractive people are made-up and coiffed and Photoshopped to the extent that they often barely resemble their subjects.

Gracie Hagen dramatizes the effects of these narrow, manipulated depictions of humanity in a brilliant, deceptively simple series of side-by-side nude portraits titled Illusions of the Body. “Most of us realize that the media displays only the prettiest photos of people, yet we compare ourselves to those images. We never get to see those photos juxtaposed against a picture of that same person looking unflattering,” Hagen writes. “That contrast would help a lot of body image issues we as a culture have.” See a selection of pictures from the series (spotted via Beautiful/Decay) below, and visit Hagen’s Tumblr to see the rest.

Full piece is here

Lessons from a Swedish co-ed sauna

I took two things away from my experience in Sweden: 1) women in America don’t see nearly enough normal, naked female bodies with which to compare themselves; 2) somewhere in their education, American men are taught that being naked equates the potential for sex.

I think a lot about behavior and how it’s formed. When we say it’s society’s fault that women feel ashamed of their bodies and men are pigs, who are we blaming? Society is us. It’s our own actions and behavior that perpetuate these ideals—and we are the ones who can change it.

What if women actually liked their bodies? What if men were taught in sex-ed that nudity doesn’t equal foreplay? What if neither sex was taught at an early age that a naked body was taboo? Would women’s near-constant quest to be more “physically attractive” cease? Would men’s ideas of acceptable sexual advances be curtailed? Would “asking for it” involve women actually asking men for sex instead of men assuming a low-cut top is a secret signal? I don’t know.

What I do know is that after four weeks of being naked in a Swedish co-ed sauna (excluding the American ogle-fest that was week three) I learned that it is possible to like my body, and for men to appreciate it without sexualizing it—two statements I never thought I’d hear myself say—which is really the saddest part of the story.

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The Body Image Movement

The Body Image Movement is a movement that recognises and values real beauty from the inside out.

Our role is to harness and facilitate positive body image activism by encouraging women to be more accepting of who they are, to use positive language about their bodies and the bodies of others, and to prioritise health before beauty.

The movement celebrates and embraces the following key messages:

Love yourself …naturally

At what point did it become so offensive to age? I feel like we might’ve become brainwashed to think that fine lines and wrinkles are a bad thing! The process of ageing should be one that is celebrated, for every line, wrinkle or sign of age means that we are alive, we are here and we are living! Why do we want to fight this process, when did ageing become so ugly and offensive?

The Body Image Movement is here to say it is okay to age; it is ok to be natural. In fact it is more than okay to be natural; it feels amazing, it feels liberating and it’s how nature intended for us to live.”

Visit the site

Michelle Pfeiffer loves to get naked at home

Michelle Pfeiffer looks forward to walking around naked now her children have left the family home.

'The Family' actress, who has two children, Claudia Rose, 20, and 19-year-old John Henry with husband David E. Kelley, admits her house feels empty since her son left for university but she can't wait to strut around without any clothes on.

Quizzed if it's difficult to not have her children at home, she said: ''I'm an empty-nester. I'm going to arrive at that place [of difficulty] but I'm not there yet. Now I'm just like, 'I can walk around naked!' That's kind of nice.''

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Can We Ever Really Love Our Body?

My sister was discussing my site with me the other morning and she said something like “Well, it’s not like a person ever really learns to love their body? They just kinda convince themselves they do, right?” And my answer was, “No. That’s not right. That might be the first step. But, you CAN actually learn to love your body. I mean we learned to not love it in the first place, so we can undo that.” Here’s what I mean.
Yes You Can

I truly believe that you CAN learn to love your body. Like any long term mature love, it is something that will have cycles, ups and downs, and most of the time not giving it a whole lot of thought. But if someone were to ask you about your long-term love, you would answer, “Yes. Of course I love my body.”
Defining Loving Your Body

Loving your body is not arrogance.

It is not conceit.

It is not feeling superior to others.

Loving your body is kindness. Loving your body is appreciation. Loving your body is compassion for “imperfections.” Loving your body is adopting humor in place of anger.

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The Right to Bare Breasts

It's hot.

So take off all your clothes... or at least the ones you can legally lose in public. A shirt, perhaps? As long as you're not dining at the Four Seasons, go for it! Guys in New York City do it all the time! And gals? Well...

Last summer -- which rivaled this one in its Al-Gore-foreshadowed, end-of-times heat -- I was walking on a Manhattan street when I noticed a naked back ahead of me. It appeared to be that of a petite, professional woman. Her shoulder-length, strawberry blonde hair was neatly cut and styled. She wore Capri pants, flats and a small purse over her left shoulder. But unless there were seashells or pasties on the other side, she was completely topless -- a fact that the hateful looks of passers-by from the other direction seemed to confirm. Now, the day was a scorcher. Doffing the top is logical, I thought. But is it legal? I didn't know. I also didn't know why I cared.

Come to think of it, why did anyone care? The man with the disdainful eyebrows, or the giggling gaggle of teens, or the woman of the hand-on-hip-superiority, dangling cigarette and grave eyes? No one could fathom the woman's shirtlessness as a right and/or choice, so instead, we all indulged in aggravated confusion. Did she have a costume malfunction on the way to work? (Corporate casual from the waist down, after all.) Were we witnessing a meltdown? Was she insane?

Then I changed the channel from confusion to curiosity. Was she a performance artist? An activist, perhaps? Maybe it's legal, I pondered, and we're all the fools! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! Yup, with this last thought I was right.

Huff Post has the rest

Nudist, Naturist Or Clothes Free?

What exactly is the difference between a nudist and a naturist? For the most part, the terms are used interchangeably, although there is some debate over nuances of meaning. The generally accepted distinction between the two terms is that "naturist" has more of a philosophical and political connotation than "nudist." Both nudists and naturists may enjoy nudity as part of an everyday lifestyle. Someone who identifies as a nudist but not as a naturist may view nudity as a leisurely pursuit or as a facet of his/her lifestyle that is not grounded in any particular philosophical belief. Someone who identifies as a naturist may have specific convictions that nude recreation promotes body acceptance and self esteem. People who identify as naturists have been the most active in advocating legal statuses for nude beaches and often work tirelessly to oppose anti-nudity legislation.

These nudist/naturist distinctions are not precise, and some people are not satisfied with either term. Must a person who enjoys sunbathing naked on the beach be labeled one way or another? Is a person who is perfectly comfortable soaking naked in natural hot springs necessarily going to be comfortable standing in line naked waiting for a serving of coleslaw at a nudist potluck? Perhaps it is the implication that nudists or naturists live naked as much as possible that some people find not to be indicative of their nude recreational pursuits. Sure, some people hang around the house in the buff all day, but we guess that most people you'll find sunbathing naked on a beach on a given afternoon are probably not naked around the dinner table later that evening.

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The Male Nude In Eighteenth Century French Art Explored

Classes were complemented by courses on anatomy, perspective, geometry, literature and history. The Academy’s training was learned and structured, and, although it was sometimes criticized for its rigour and its insistence on discipline and uniformity, it produced superb draughtsmen. Some of the artists featured became painting Masters of their generation, focusing on historical and allegorical pictures. Others utilised their training in a variety of artistic fields, including Bachelier, who went on to assume the role of Director of Design and Decoration at the Sèvres porcelain factory, influencing many of the pieces exhibited in the Wallace Collection.

Variety and beauty are omnipresent in The Male Nude. The works show figures – sometimes single, sometimes two together - in an enormous variety of poses and in various degrees of light and shade. The study of physiognomic expression was also taught at the Academy, and the facial expressions of the figures always complement the poses they adopt, whether they show, say, serenity, exertion, pleasure or anger.

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True Nudists :: Interview with "hikergirl"

True Nudists :: Interview with "hikergirl" from True Nudists on Vimeo.

To visit hikergirl's profile on truenudists visit truenudists.com?track=hkg

True Nudists :: Interviews "hikergirl" about why she's a nudist and what nudism means to her. Visit truenudists.com to find more videos, learn about nudism and meet other nudists.

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Miley Cyrus Wanted To Perform Topless During MTV VMAs

Miley Cyrus has revealed that she originally wanted her MTV Video Music Awards performance to be even racier than it was.

The singer, who caused controversy during her performance with Robin Thicke, revealed during her new hour-long special for MTV that she originally wanted to perform her single "We Can't Stop" and then with Thick on his hit "Blurred Lines" half-naked.

"Miley The Movement" debuted on Wednesday night, and in the special, which chronicled the months leading up to her VMAs performance, she told Britney Spears about her original plans.

"You're not going to be topless onstage, are you?" Spears asked.

"I tried but I don't think MTV's going to allow it," Miley replies.

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Clothing is optional in Germany

Naturism is big for Germans. Around 1 in 10 take a naked vacation at least once a year, according to Kurt Fischer, president of German Association for Free Body Culture.

Lately, however, nudism has been getting some additional exposure with the circulation of a photo purporting to show a young Angela Merkel and a couple of friends out for a waterside stroll in the buff.

The photo’s authenticity is contested, but there’s no doubt that naturism was popular in East Germany when Merkel — who’s expected to stay on as chancellor after elections later this month — was growing up there in the 1960s and ’70s.

Tolerated by the Communist authorities, stripping off became a way for East Germans to commune with nature and break with the regime’s conformity. The DDR Museum dedicated to showing daily life in East Germany in Berlin has exhibits illustrating the role nudism played there — with dioramas depicting naked sunbathing and volleyball.

Even today, naturism is more widespread in eastern resorts like Glowe, on the holiday island of Ruegen, which is part of the district Chancellor Merkel represents in parliament.

Full piece is at Salon

Topless Iggy Azalea calls for BOOB REVOLUTION as she embraces 'small boobies'

Following its release, the Aussie blonde took to Twitter asking fans to support women with boobs of all sizes.

After making #fashiont*ts trend worldwide, she wrote: "If you have small boobies, I think us girls should still feel good about them... Work what you got.”

The video has been labelled 18+ on YouTube, meaning viewers must sign in to see the video.

But, Iggy refused to upload a clean version of the vid, arguing that she shouldn't have to change it for the world wide web.

She wrote: "nah, should have to censor my vision for the Internet. That's lame.”

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Is Topless Sunbathing Good for American Tourism?

Is America ready for topless sunbathing beaches? Will it be good for tourism?

August 25th marked the sixth anniversary of Go Topless Day. It's always held right around Women's Equality Day, which this year marked the 93rd anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving American women the right to vote.

Celebrations and protests in favor of top-free rights were held around the world, including in over 30 U.S. cities.

Some women feel since American society has sexualized women's breasts for so many years, it's going to take much more than an annual celebration/protest to change attitudes allowing topless sunbathing, so why even bother.

Other women point out how liberating it is to be top-free, especially at beaches. And it's immaterial whether some people in society sexualize breasts or not. Going topless wherever men can be shirtless is a matter of legal equality. And the New York Supreme Court agreed with these women in 1992, making it legal to be topless in New York.

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Top 10 naked hotels in the world

By Lu Na (China.org.cn)

Famous German travel website Trivago.com recently published its top 10 most welcoming "naked hotels" as favored by travelers.

Germany's FKK (Freikörperkultur or "free body culture") movement is a cultural phenomenon across Europe, proposing people spend their days naked and in harmony with nature. It goes without saying that most of the hotels are located in Europe.

Most of the hotels allow their guests to remain in the nude when sitting in their restaurants, bars, gyms and hot springs. However, some hotels only allow their customers to be naked in the hot spring area.

Take a look at the following 10 unique hotels and resorts:

Here

Stand Up For Women's Rights: Show Us Your Boobs

If you really gave two nipples about women's equality, then you'd take off your shirt already.

In conjunction with Women's Equality Day, women and fans of women will descend on Dolores park sans shirts on Sunday at noon for Go Topless Day, because if men can walk around topless, then damn it women can, too. (Note to prolific nudists: This bare-chested bash is permitted).

But this isn't totally about getting rid of those bikini top tan lines -- it's about getting rid of inequality.

Go Topless Day always falls on the Sunday closest to Women's Equality Day, which is Aug 26. It was that day in 1920 that women (aka people with boobs) earned their right to vote on the basis of Gender Equality. In 1971, the U.S Congress declared Aug. 26 Women's Equality Day, and the president is summoned to celebrate this day each year.

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Gaga embraces being naked

Lady Gaga was comfortable shedding her clothes from a young age.

The singer often turns heads for her outrageous costumes and earlier this month featured in a video for performance artist Marina Abramović in which she walks around nude.

The star, real name Stefani Germanotta, admits she was never a modest child and her mother often went to great lengths to control her extrovert daughter around company.

"I definitely walked around naked a lot as a kid," Gaga revealed on Sirius XM's The Morning Mash Up.

"And my mom used to joke with me because I would always try to freak the babysitter out and... hide behind the couch and rip all my clothes off and run around and singing The Little Mermaid or whatever."

The Applause singer is now finding great purpose in feeling free to be in the buff.

She's fascinated by how well she can express a new character by using little more than her nude body.

"And now really what it's more about is I find it very interesting to be able to transform as much as possible with very little makeup and nude," Gaga explained.

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