How Nudism Cured my Inferiority Complex - The Naturist # 3 February 1938
The Naturist # 3 February 1938
In this third issue of the British nudist magazine The Naturist their cover interesting topics such as:
A LEAGUE OF NATURISTS
A reader has suggested the formation of a league or association of naturists and while at present we prefer not to comment on the matter we feel that this is a suggestion that will be of general interest. When you have read Mr. Wilson's letter we would like you to send us your views on the subject. Do you think a league of naturists is wanted? Would you be prepared to help? And how do you think it should be organized?
A league you say?
Sorry I had to make the joke.
The Editor, "The Naturist."
Dear Sir, —As a firm believer in the value of natural living I am delighted to see that a magazine has at last made its appearance which presents the views and ideals of naturists such as myself in a clear, concise and understandable manner. It has always been my opinion that the naturist movement has lost a great deal because of the lack of such an organ. This deficiency no longer existing, the movement will be able to answer its critics and spread its gospel in the widest possible manner -a facility which cannot fail to increase our numbers and add to our influence.
The obvious success of the " Naturist" makes it quite clear that there are thousands of people who believe in naturism. Why, therefore, should we rest content with an organ of expression? Why not collaborate even more closely than the pages of the " Naturist " will permit? Why not, in other words, form a league or association of naturists? It seems to me that concerted action is absolutely essential for the successful furtherance of our beliefs; and a league or association will provide us with the ideal means of ensuring such concerted action.
I must confess that at present I cannot suggest how best such a league or association may be started. There must be ways and means and if the "Naturist" would undertake to co-operate in such an enterprise then I am sure that there would be few difficulties.
Perhaps other readers with more experience than I may be able to make suggestions. Yours faithfully,
Andrew Wilson, Jnr
This letter was written a good decade before International Naturist Federation was founded. Are you a member of any naturist organizations?
LITERARY COMPETITION RESULTS
The following two letters have been accepted in the Literary Competition, and we are awarding to both writers the sum of 10/6. (10 shillings and 6 pence. The price of a top hat in Alice in Wonderland.) We have complied with the request of the competitors not to publish their names and addresses.
The first letter is from a woman talking about the inferiority complex she had. To be honest though, it does remind me a lot of eugenics which was very popular in nudism and Western society during this time period. In books like Maurice Parmelee’s The New Gymnosophy, there is an expressed fear that men are marrying women for their faces rather than their bodies leading to “inferior breeding”.
January 1938
Dear Sir,
People who talk to me of naturism, knowing nothing of it themselves, have often said " But some people must look so ugly naked," and they express polite disbelief when I assure them that the majority of people look better undressed than dressed. The modern man's attire is neither graceful nor dignified, and it is quite surprising how many men look both when free from their clothes. Besides, the fact that they are naturists implies that they are the kind of people who look after, and take a pride in, their bodies.
Nor is it to be thought that as a body grows older it necessarily becomes ugly; it may, and very often does, gain in poise and character what it loses in purely youthful lines.
With women it is equally true. Many a woman who would be passed over unnoticed in a crowd of prettier, better dressed women, on removing her clothes becomes quite strikingly lovely.
If only more plain women would become naturists. When I look at those women I see every day in the train, I long to tell them my secret; how immeasurably they too, could gain in health, personality and therefore attractiveness, and of the happiness which might be theirs if they would shake off their prejudices and their clothes, and come out into the sunshine, naked and unashamed.
Naturism seems to me to be the great chance for women with that inferiority complex which is inevitable to those who have grown up, as I did, from a plain-faced little girl to a big girl with an even plainer face, but who may have, unsuspected by anyone, a beautiful body.
Oh, poor Plain Janes, stop trying to attain the impossible with somebody's face cream (guaranteed to give you a face like a film star in a fortnight) and let the sunshine beautify you instead. Take the plunge as I did it isn't at all terrible really and when at last you are out under the sky and the trees perhaps you will look down at your bodies and find yourselves not Plain Janes at all, but graceful, beautiful women.
Believe me, when you do that, the inferiority complex will vanish like a bad dream and you will realize you have nothing to fear by comparison with your prettier faced sisters.
And if the sight of your naked body gives pleasure to anyone besides yourself, far from being ashamed of this, be humbly thankful that you are permitted to beautify the world and not to disfigure it. Who knows, perhaps this is the way true love and marriage may come to you, as it did to me.
“Not-so-plain Jane.”
And this is a letter from an officer in the Royal Navy.
January 1938
Sir,
In the excellent article in your January number entitled "The Ethics of Nudism," your contributor says " where nothing is concealed, there can exist no prurient curiosity." We must all agree with that as self-evident; but the implied conversethat the curiosity aroused by concealment is prurient is not perhaps quite fair to the average man. The instincts and promptings of sex are present in practically all of us, and in a man they respond to the visual impression of a partial revealing of feminine beauty as automatically as any other combination of senses and nerves.
I had an example of that recently when watching a well known dancing and posing act. The girl, a physically lovely creature, having finished a ballroom dance, was then to pose nude; and before doing so, she took off her dress and then her undergarment prior to stepping on to the plinth for her first pose. From then onwards she was a personification of beauty,
and nothing else; but for the few seconds during which she divested herself of her flimsy camisole, I had the sudden and irresistible impression of her as a pretty and seductive woman. I am not particularly, I believe, either susceptible or the reverse; nor do I suppose that she had any intention of introducing a momentary " strip-tease" act into her otherwise unexceptionable turn: but there were the facts and was I to be regarded as being "prurient" for those few seconds?
All the more, then, let our aim be that there shall be two ordinary and normal states for men, women and children alike either to be adequately dressed when social or climatic reasons so require, or to be naked. We are not able, even if we so wished, to root out sex; it has its part, of immense biological and psychological importance, to play in the lives of all of us: but let us try to keep that part within its reasonable occasions and environments, and so leave our bodies free from its obsession at all other times free to express themselves in all the health and grace and freedom that is their heritage.
“Naval Officer."
Other articles like :
DOES IT PAY TO BE TALL?
EXERCISES FOR MEN AND WOMEN
INFRA-RED RAYS
WHAT HEALTH CULTURE MEANS
can be found here in the PDF file.
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These magazines are not just very interesting from the nudist perspective, but also as an insight into other social aspects such as the dietary adverts and being tall.
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