Free Republic

The Paris Plage people knew what they were doing when they put that retro bathing-beauty on this year's beach poster. Body-covering, single-piece swimsuits are indeed the fashion, but for want of real news, le Parisien decided to fill a page yesterday under the headline: "Le monokini, c'est fini!." Le Parisien's story was over a decade out of date, but that did not prevent foreign media from lifting it as a suitable silly season item. Topless bathing in reality ceased to be fashionable well before the fin of the last siècle and for years few young women have been venturing onto...

Keep that towel handy. California parks officials can enforce a ban on nudity at any state beach, even in areas that have been informally designated as "clothing optional," a state appeals court says. The new policy will take effect immediately, although officers will decide whether to warn, cite or arrest violators, said Roy Stearns, spokesman for the state Parks and Recreation Department. "I'm pretty sure that we will try to tread lightly to get compliance at first," he said Monday, three days after the appellate court in Santa Ana published its ruling as a statewide precedent. "We're not in the...

The Times points out that parents who enroll their pre-teen and teen age kids to the nation’s growing number of nudist camps geared for that age group aren’t very concerned about it and in fact find it a wholesome and safe environment. Actually, according to the Times, “‘The Nudist Association, the larger of two nationwide, sees this as a place to train ‘youth ambassadors’ to what nudists call the ‘textile’ world.”’ Apparently, there is a movement to convert or at least desensitize us all to nudity. Perhaps they even want us all to be so desensitized that we also stop...

The variety of nude beaches of the world. But you have to be careful (0)The people, who were peacefully resting on one of the beaches in Saudi Arabia this January, witnessed an international scandal. A naked girl showed up on the beach. Three guys from security ran up to her, put a blanket on her shoulders and took the girl away to a police station. The girl turned out to be a German national, and she was put behind the bars because she dared to show up in a public place without any clothes on. Representatives of the German embassy...