Mark Zuckerburg isn’t what he wears, and neither are you

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Mark Zuckerburg’s choice of clothing for recent Wall Street meetings, and the reaction to it, perfectly demonstrates one of the key tenets of naturism: that clothes do not make the man (or woman.) Does anything about why Zuckerburg or Facebook are successful change when Zuckerburg chooses not to wear a business suit? Of course not. Clothing doesn’t make him a better person, nor does it make you better, either. We are what we are, not what we wear.

Taking It Back In-House

Bare Platypus, the most interesting new naturist blog to launch in 2012, recently posted about how the content policies of the big social networks can (and do) make life on their sites difficult, if not impossible, for naturists, citing the recent suspension of All Nudist by Facebook as an example. The good platypus makes the point that these policies can be even more harmful than state censorship to people who are depending on these services to get their message out.

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Stay Positive at the Eastern Naturist Gathering

Details are yet to be worked out, but it looks like I will be presenting at this year’s Eastern Naturist Gathering. I’ll be doing a workshop called “Stay Positive! Building on What Works”, based on my Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive post from last fall. As you know from that post, too often, we promote or defend naturism by denying others’ misplaced notions. The idea of this workshop is to get us to stop talking about what naturists aren’t and concentrate on promoting what we are. We’ll talk about what we love about naturism, what makes it work for us, and how to use these good things to promote naturism and make it even better.

This is the first time I’ll be at the ENG since it moved to its current location, which looks like a great place. If you’re going to be there, I’d love to see you at the workshop. Or if the workshop isn’t your thing, I’d still like to meet any of my readers who will be there. Leave a comment here, or contact me via Twitter or Facebook, or email if that works best for you, and we’ll figure out a time to meet. (My wife and I will be there from Monday afternoon through around lunchtime on Friday – unfortunately, we have a prior commitment for the weekend.) Hope to see you there!

Birthday Suits

Today, I celebrate a milestone: my fortieth birthday. Some of you probably remember when you were 40; some of you may not. It also happens that this year marks, more or less, my twentieth anniversary as a “serious” naturist, when I started taking those first steps towards being committed to and proud of my participation in naturism. Here’s the story of what happened back in 1992 that convinced me I was a naturist for life.

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Anonymity is for bullies, not naturists

Anonymity is, like many things, a double-edged sword. You can use it for good by staying anonymous when you make charitable donations, report crimes to the police, or blow the whistle on government or corporate corruption. You can use it for evil by staying anonymous when you bully or threaten people. The pseudo-anonymity of the Internet has thus been one of its best and worst features. Today we’re going to talk about the “worst” part.

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New Naturists: Meet them where they are

I’m really happy to see several strong, thriving organizations for young-adult naturists. I’m just about to hit 40, so I’m no longer the target market for these groups, but I once was. Historically, we (and I include myself in that “we”) haven’t done a really great job of attracting and retaining new young people to naturism, or retaining the kids that were raised naturists after they move into their college years. So it’s nice to see groups like Young Naturists America and Florida Young Naturists doing so well (and I think it’s great that there are multiple groups, instead of just one monolithic group; the competition between them has usually been friendly, and there’s no one right way to do it.) Kind of makes me wish they’d been around when I was their age.

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