If you want a quick and short answer: A LOT.
For those into TL;DR, that’s it. Stop reading and move on with life, and thank you for reading this far! 😉
For those who care to know a bit more, here is more.
What’s in a name?
William Shakespeare also wondered about the same thing.
The name for today is ‘lifestyle’. A while ago, on MeWe, I saw a post by Linda “TrueBlueNude”, who had something to say about that very word. She wrote that the word ‘lifestyle’ was getting a negative charge, as that is being used by swingers and the like, as “the lifestyle”.
This got me thinking, and there is something to it.
Our preferred way to live, nude/naked/naturist/natural/nudist, is a lifestyle. We can change this to philosophy or ideology.
But…
Aren’t we running away from something then? Nudism and naturism has already been tainted by the porn industry. Now ‘lifestyle’ is looking at the same issue, thanks to swingers. How long do we have to wait until someone comes up with another nasty business and links that to ideology, like child marriage? Do we then run away from ‘ideology’ too, leaving us with philosophy, until another mind-maggot comes up with their disgusting ‘philosophy’?
Giving in to that might have an opposite effect, when we paint ourselves into a corner from where there is no way to describe what we’re actually pursuing and doing.
What if we take back nudism and naturism by making that real?
Real naturism. Real nudism. A naturist lifestyle. A nudist lifestyle. Perhaps even ‘the real naturist/nudist lifestyle’?
Defining something a bit more properly, making it clear to those with a dirty or misguided mind, might be better than abandoning the word-ship that our movement has sailed on for so long.
There will always be people who don’t want to know about the way we like to live. People who are conditioned into not daring to know. We can’t give in to everyone who tries to take a word from us. Let’s take it back and show the world what and who we are. For real.
That way we can stay out out of the shadows.
And let’s be honest, out of the shadows and in the sunshine is where naturism and nudism, the real thing, comes out best.