American Nudist: The Lost Journal

By Tony Young

More than a how-to book. More than a nude beach update. "American Nudist" is the story of a Hawaii- born nudist's unique life, his personal and political struggles and the creative work that resulted. "American Nudist" collects journalist/filmmaker Tony Young's published and unpublished articles on the naturist lifestyle written during his college years, chronicles his experiences organizing the Hawaii Skinnydippers in the mid-1990s, along with his controversial poetry and short stories. All this and a nude beach guide to the Hawaiian Islands.

According to Photographer/Producer Clinton H. Wallace's introduction, this book is "a spiritual quest, full of triumphs and failures, the ultimate significance of Young's journal resides not only in his contribution to our knowledge of the nudist lifestyle but reminds us how incomplete that knowledge is."

Second Edition, Revised and Updated for 2016

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Young
• Release date: May 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311345516

Tony Young

Tony Young is a prolific freelance writer with articles, fiction, and drama printed in Naturist newspapers and magazines beginning in the 1990s, including Bare in Mind, N: Nude and Natural, Naturally, and Naturist Life International. Young graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1992 with a B.A. in English and Theatre and is currently active in the Hawaii theater scene. In 1996, he won the Kumu Kahua Playwriting Award for One Acts for his play, “Accumulating Scars.” He has also written several screenplays and starred in the feature film version of “American Nudist.” Screenwriting credits include, “The Last Eve” and Cinema Epoch’s “Violent Blue” and “Blue Dream” the latter starring James Duval and Dominique Swain; “Blue Dream” premiered at the San Francisco Indiefest in February of 2013, and went on to become the official selection at the Boston Underground Film Festival and the Gold Coast Film Festival in Australia.

Book preview

FOREWORD

by Clinton H. Wallace

Making the rounds as a Hollywood event photographer and independent film producer, I’ve learned to always keep track of every contact. You never know where your next gig or your next film idea may come from.

I have photographed numerous celebrities on the red carpet, produced films that have played in festivals, even attended Cannes several times. But the incident that led me to discover this book didn’t occur at some Hollywood cocktail soirée or fancy yacht party on the French Riviera.

It happened at a garage sale just outside of Hollywood.

While visiting an actress friend in the Hollywood Hills, she sweet-talked me into helping her unload some junk from her bungalow in preparation for a garage sale. Amongst her items was a box of books; one stood out in particular. It wasn’t a published book. Rather, it was a dilapidated, 58-page spiral bound copy center manuscript. Its cover was a simple light blue pastel paper, not even cardstock, but the title, Naked in Paradise: A Chronicle of the Hawai’i Skinnydippers caught my eye.

Of course, any title with the word Naked in it is guaranteed to grab attention. I asked her if she’d written it. She told me it belonged to a former roommate who’d written an independent film she’d just starred in. But the less said about that film, the better.

This could make a great movie, I told her. Sensing my enthusiasm, she gave me the manuscript, along with the author’s contact information.

This nude journal opened me up to an entire world I never knew existed. It was more than a diary of some guy who liked to go skinnydipping. For this writer, Tony Young, the path to his chosen lifestyle was a spiritual quest, filled with many triumphs and failures.

I met with him a few weeks later and asked if he could revise and update his journal; tell his readers what happened after he left Hawaii. Did he continue being a nudist in the sunshine state? He answered my question with a new batch of articles, an additional short story and two feature films.

More than a how to book, more than a nude beach update — but he included that too! This is a story of a life in a bygone era—the pre-internet 1990s, capturing a specific moment in time when a political and personal struggle gave birth to the creative work that followed.

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Clinton H. Wallace is a press photographer known for photographing high profile events. He is the West Coast Staff Photographer for Globe Photos Inc. and founder of Photomundo, International.

INTRODUCTION

Call me an idealist, a dreamer, a free spirit who sees the world through a set of rose-colored glasses; who sees a world not as it is, but as it should be.

Call me a rebel, a bad influence corrupting the young minds of America with radical ideas of body acceptance, with the right to populate our family beaches with naked bodies frolicking in the sun, free and unashamed — an ocean of sun-bronzed bodies set against the beauty of God’s natural creation.

I have been called all these things, but those words are just labels. And labels won’t tell you much. Labels serve to limit and hinder. In my line of work, I have just as many labels. I call myself a writer, a poet, a photographer – an artist with a vision. I thought I’d realized that vision by becoming a naturist, or nudist.

I’ve known about nudists since the sixth grade, but it wasn’t until 1989, while a student at the University of Hawai’i, I watched a television news special on Geraldo discussing that subject. At the end of the program, they broadcast the address for a national nudist organization called the Naturist Society. I signed up for membership and attended their Western Regional Gathering in Lupin, California the following summer.

Two years later, I visited Rawhide Ranch (now Laguna Del Sol) near Sacramento. Having grown up in a conservative Chinese American family in Honolulu, my two brief visits to these mainland campgrounds were the only experiences I had in seeing the beauty of the nude human form, unretouched, uncensored, with no age limit, no restrictions based on race, religion or attractiveness.

I actually believed I could take that idea back home. I even joined the American Sunbathing Association (ASA) now known as AANR: American Association for Nude Recreation. At the time, being a card-carrying naturist in the islands wasn’t cost effective since all of their clubs and resorts were on the mainland, so after graduation, I took the first opportunity I had to start a local club called the Hawai’i Skinnydippers.

The Skinnydippers lasted about five years, but that short amount of time was enough to put my naturist beliefs into perspective, forcing me to learn things about myself that I hadn’t been aware of before. My experiences with local nudists shaped my outlook on naturism today, twenty years later and living in Hollywood, California and returning to Honolulu, Hawai’i, in 2011.

This book presents a chronicle of my first ten years as a naturist, beginning with articles I’d written in college, to letters corresponding with prominent naturist leaders during my time with the Hawai’i Skinnydippers. I’ve included short stories and poetry published during those years, stories that would later become the basis of my film work. I’ve also included a nude beach update current as of 2016, since I often get requests for such information.

Since this book had originally been written in 1998, addendums and editor’s notes have been added to update the original articles, some of which have been modified for clarity.

As a naturist, I’ve committed myself to old school naturism, based upon the century old tradition of Germany’s Naktkultur which emphasized health and fitness. Though some fringe groups such as swingers and polyamorists do engage in nude recreation, I had never encountered any while in Hawai’i, and made only passing references to them in this book. This is not their story.

But first things first. A few definitions of key terms used in this journal are in order: a landed nudist club is a park, resort or campground, called so because the proprietors own their own facilities. A non-landed nudist club is a travel club whose members gather in private homes; some organize trips to landed clubs, usually at a discounted group rate.

Second, you’ll probably notice two different spellings of Hawai’i in this book. Hawai’i is the correct spelling with the okina (‘) a unicase letter signifying a glottal stop. However, in reprinting or quoting from letters and articles, I’ve used the Westernized spelling whenever it was rendered thus in the original text.

Finally, when I first conceived this book in 1995, I had originally intended to dedicate it to the youths of Hawai’i, in the hope that they’ll someday learn the value of body acceptance and be able to accept one another, nudist or non-nudist, as part of our ‘ohana or family.

That dedication no longer applies.

—Tony Young, 1996,

Revised, 2013

CHAPTER ONE

articles by an idealist

NUDISM AS A SOCIAL DEVIANCE

—Bare in Mind 18.2, Feb. 1990

In artistic circles, the nude human body is considered a work of art. In the movies and on television, the body is a commodity to be glamorized, marketed and exploited. For children, it is some-thing they can only look at in secret.

These attitudes contradict one another, but they are considered to be the accepted social norms. Nearly everyone in mainstream American society will agree that there are certain parts of the body that are unfit to be viewed in public.

This attitude is not shared all over the world, nor is it confined to America. Ironically, it is the same body with the same organs that has caused decades of controversy.

The conservative American attitude is a direct result of a society that has been conditioned to being properly clothed at all times. Hence, the wide market for pornography which allows society to view the body’s sexual functions in private. Some consider it degrading, but it is still within the norm.

Within American society is a group of people who reject these so called norms. Called, nudists or naturists, these people are considered deviant because they practice a clothing-free lifestyle in a social environment.

The nudist movement in America began in 1929 when German immigrant, Kurt Barthel organized a group of people in a gymnasium for the purpose of exercising without the restrictions of clothing. In Barthel’s homeland, nude exercises had been practiced since the turn of the century. In the years to come, nudity would be tolerated on all public beaches and parks throughout Europe. Barthel and his contemporaries, Adolf Koch and Alois Knapp felt that puritanical America could benefit greatly from the idea of body acceptance and freedom.

One wonders today about the legacy of these pioneers of nudism. History books do not mention their names or their accomplishments, nor can their stories be found in the public library.

In recent years, participation in nudist activities has involved grounds for divorce and false charges of child molestation. Though there is more tolerance in various parts of this country, it is a battle that is far from won.

We have unofficially designated areas for nude swimming and sunbathing, far from public view. We have clothing optional apartments and resorts and several national organizations which promote naturism as an alternative lifestyle.

Naturists continue to participate in such activities because they believe that activities such as swimming, sunbathing and sports are more comfortable while not burdened or restrained by clothes. Nudity is natural, they say.

Nudist clubs and club owners, mostly of European descent, are merely continuing a prevalent tradition from home, recruiting members through word of mouth, sharing their beliefs with prospective members. This is an example of cultural transmission.

Unfortunately, nudists are confronted daily by too many labels. Far too many people link nudity with sex and take offense because nudism contradicts their religious or cultural beliefs. In Hawai’i, it is illegal to swim or sunbathe [fully] nude on public beaches, despite the number of European tourists who do this regularly.

Unlike the mainland, nudism did not exist here during the 1920s and 1930s. Though some will argue that prior to the arrival of Captain Cook, Hawai’i was one of the biggest nude beaches in the world. Unfortunately, the body acceptance attitudes of the native Hawaiians no longer exist and very few locals swim or sunbathe in the nude.

In modern Hawai’i, ignorance of the existence of nudists is still affluent. Those who profess to be nudists are looked upon as rebels, but in reality, they are merely practicing a lifestyle that mainstream America is not used to.