Parable of the Foolish Sunbathers

“The Parable of the Foolish Sunbathers” is a mini-masterpiece by fellow naturist fiction writer Ted Bun. How mini is mini? Word count: 8. Just eight words plus the title, over an illustration by turn-of-the-twentieth-century Danish painter Paul Fischer of three nude women reclining on an isolated stretch of beach. What are the eight words? “You mean, none of us brought a book?”

I call this a mini-masterpiece because it is an incredibly efficient conveyance of an essential message for us naturist readers and writers: Getting caught without your clothes? No problem. But don’t get caught without a book! Moreover, Ted designed this little classic for his weekly Follow Friday shout-outs on his Twitter feed. The naturist context of the image – social nudism under the sun – supports the list of naturist, nudist, nude-friendly and associated writers and tweeters that are featured in the shout-outs. Ted’s Friday/weekend tweets have become a highlight of the week.

And he’s designed many further images to that end, a sampling of which you can see below:

All of these memes very cleverly repurpose familiar images, ideas and characters to bring immediacy to the power and intent behind writing and reading books. The tweets with these images are widely retweeted and responded to – many of us owe Ted a great deal for helping market and draw interest to our collective work as naturist writers! After all, it’s one thing to write a novel of tens of thousands of words, but quite another to summarize messages effectively into pithy mottos or slogans.

I wrote about naturist memes and photo captions back when they were a somewhat newer phenomenon in 2015. Over the past several years, Ted has upped the game in a way that not only helps readers and writers of naturist fiction, but also spreads the general messages of body acceptance and wholesome, healthy naturism. I’ll close with a final example of Ted’s that uses his book Then Play On in a rather “cheeky” way, and a visually similar image using my novel Aglow at a photoshoot at Intima Resort in Tulum, Mexico.

The model reclining second from the right has covered her chest with Aglow – the copy I donated to the resort’s little library! Now if it were up to me, I would have done that photoshoot very differently, but I wasn’t involved, and in the end, it’s a very nice “product placement.” In fact, it must be recognized that these particular sunbathers… are not foolish at all!