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Nude swimming

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"Skinny dip" redirects here. For other uses, see Skinny dip (disambiguation).

Nude swimming (colloquially called skinny dipping) is a term used to describe swimming naked.

Etymology

Skinny dipping on a French beach

The term skinny dip, first recorded in English in the 1950s, includes the somewhat archaic word skinny, known since 1573, meaning "having to do with skin", as it exposed the naked body; in World War II skinny was also used for the "naked" truth.

Definitions

The term is commonly used with a neutral tone to describe swimming in unheated water, but is also used when referring to going naked in hot tubs and hot springs.

It has a more mischievous connotation when describing swimming excursions (often under cover of darkness) in swimming pools or at beaches where one would be expected to wear swimsuits. In this sense, skinny dipping in mixed company (i.e. both males and females) has an element of sexual rebelliousness to it, though sexual activity does not necessarily take place.

In the UK skinny-dipping is sometimes known as "naked swimming" though this can also refer to simply swimming in nature.[1]

History

Prior to the mid-19th century, swimming nude was unexceptional. Kilvert, a skinny-dipper, (1873) describes men's bathing suits then coming into use as "a pair of very short red and white stripped drawers".[2] Period illustrations of women's suits show they were far more cumbersome.

Benjamin Franklin, an avid swimmer, possessed a copy of the Art of Swimming by Melchisédech Thévenot, which featured illustrations of nude swimmers. Among other notable Americans, Presidents John Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt are perhaps the best-known skinny-dippers. Roosevelt describes nude swims in the Potomac with his "tennis cabinet" in his "Autobiography": "If we swam the Potomac, we usually took off our clothes."[3] Quotations from the diary of Rev. Robert Francis Kilvert, an English nude swimmer, in Cec Cinder's The Nudist Idea, show the transition in the England of the 1870s from an acceptance of nude bathing to the mandatory use of bathing suits. Kilvert describes "a delicious feeling of freedom in stripping in the open air and running down naked to the sea".[4]

Although modern swimwear is more practical, nude swimming remains a fairly common activity in rural areas, where an unwanted audience of outsiders is rather unlikely; yet it may be forbidden even there by law. Today, many swimmers in the U.S. limit nude swimming to private locations due to concerns about public nudity.

Ernest Thompson Seton describes skinny dipping as one of the first activities of his Woodcraft Indians, a forerunner of the Scout movement, in 1902.[5]

Before the YMCA began to admit females in the early 1960s, swimming trunks were not even allowed in the pools,[6] and high school swimming classes for boys sometimes had similar policies, citing the impracticality of providing and maintaining sanitary swimming gear and clogging swimming pools' filtration systems with lint fibers from the swimsuits. These practices were common because of the perception that there was nothing wrong or sexual about seeing members of the same gender in the nude, especially in these indoor contexts among equals in 'birthday suit uniform'.

In some English schools, Manchester Grammar School for example, nude swimming was compulsory until the 1970s.[7] This was also the case for some U.S. junior high schools.[8] A 2006 Roper poll showed that 25% of all American adults had been skinny dipping at least once, and that 74% believed nude swimming should be tolerated at accepted locations.[9]

In the United States, various counties and municipalities may enact their own dress codes, and many have. There is no federal law against nudity. Nude beaches, such as Baker Beach in San Francisco, operate within federal park lands in California. However, under a provision called concurrent jurisdiction, federal park rangers may enforce state and local laws, or invite local authorities to do so.

While exceptional in the U.S., some nude or more accurately clothing-optional beach areas have been designated or marked by signs by government entities. Among the most widely used are Gunnison Beach in New Jersey (National Park Service) and Haulover Beach in Florida (Miami-Dade County).

In India people may be allowed to dip nude in the Ganges for religious purposes although it is normally not permitted in India to disrobe in public. Most notice that Indian women, more than men, dip semi-nude or topless and sometimes even totally nude.

Arts

Nude swimming was a common subject of Old Masters and Romantic oil paintings, usually bucolic or in a mythological or historical setting. In later days it became rarer, but more likely to depict straight-forward contemporary scenes.

  • Norman Rockwell's painting No Swimming that adorned the cover of the June 4, 1921 edition of the Saturday Evening Post with boys in various states of undress escaping from the local authorities.

Photos

  • Eakins, Thomas (1844-1916) - 1883 - Eakin's art studens bathing 2
    Eakins, Thomas (1844-1916) - 1883 - Eakin's art studens bathing 2
  • Migjorn (625361194)
    Migjorn (625361194)
  • Sk dip
    Sk dip
  • Tidal Pool Nude 2
    Tidal Pool Nude 2
  • Phoque humain dans eau
    Phoque humain dans eau
  • Fotothek df roe-neg 0006337 044 Badende
    Fotothek df roe-neg 0006337 044 Badende
  • AF0 9093
    AF0 9093

Films

There are numerous mainstream films which contain scenes with people swimming or diving (jumping into water) in the nude, though at earlier times they were closely scrutinised by film censors. Nude swimming is considered more innocent than nudity in an explicitly sexual context.

Television

  • In Ren and Stimpy, Stimpy takes off his fur emulating nudity and jumps into a lake. When Ren takes off his fur, he is revealed to be wearing briefs. Stimpy insists he take them off, in which Ren hesitantly does and the two swim. Then, two nudists see them and, much to their chagrin, join them. This followed by other types of nude events, such as "skinny stomping."
  • In the Smallville episode "Slumber", Lana convinces to Clark to go skinny dipping with her, although it was revealed to be a dream.
  • In Gavin and Stacey Season 2 Episode 1 Stacey reveals that she and Gavin went skinny dippy on a deserted island while on their Honeymoon
  • An episode of Doogie Howser, M.D. featured Doogie Howser and a female acquaintance of his mothers going skinny dipping in their pool.

See also

References

  1. ^ See for instance Waterlog by Roger Deakin.
  2. ^ quoted in Cec Cinder, PhD: The Nudist Idea, Ultraviolet Press, Riverside, California: 1998, p. 333. ISBN 9780965208505
  3. ^ Theodore Roosevelt, "An Autobiography", Library of America edition, New York: 2004, pp 298-300.
  4. ^ quoted in Cec Cinder, PhD: The Nudist Idea, Ultraviolet Press, Riverside, California: 1998, pp 331-333. ISBN 9780965208505
  5. ^ Seton, Ernest Thompson (1951), Trail of an Artist Naturalist, London: Hodder and Stoughton, ISBN 040510734X {{citation}}: More than one of |location= and |place= specified (help)
  6. ^ Tate, Cassandra (2001-03-14). "Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) of Greater Seattle -- Part 3: Readjustment, 1930-1980". HistoryLink.org. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
  7. ^ Cohen, Michael (December 2005), "Swimming Naked at MGS" (PDF), The Mancunian, retrieved 2007-11-27 From about 1930 until at least the 1970s (this contributor left MGS in 1973)
  8. ^ Nude Swimming at Johnston JHS, 1959 to 61, October 15 December, retrieved 2007-11-27 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help) From about 1951 to 1970?
  9. ^ Roper poll online.
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