paolo deandreis

I really dont know friends. I think my fellow citizens are somehow doomed, I cant see any progress and I'm a little fed up with my country. This is what happened just a few days ago.

I was on the Alps and took one day off from the company of my old ones to enjoy a nude morning hike by myself, not having found "accomplices" to do that together with.

It was early in the morning but pretty warm already, so I took off my shirt and shorts as soon as I left the village. I really couldnt expect to meet anyone being so early in the morning up that trail (I would expect to meet someone on lower paths, where in the morning some go jogging), so I was just enjoying my naked experience within beautiful woods.

After a long walk I stood at almost 2000 meters, in a narrow path, looking at those beautiful mountains still looming above the treetops, and wondering how long it would take to get to the top, when I suddendly heard the heavy steps of two people coming down. They were not the usual hikers, they had tents on their backpacks and I immediately understood they spent the night up there. Thats why, I think now, I didnt feel any urge to cover up, or hide or anything, I didnt even think about it also because it was very narrow in that point. But I thought that two guys interested in nature would certainly overlook or maybe laugh at a fellow naked hiker met on the path.

Was I wrong!!

It turned out one of those two guys is an agent for the italian entity that protects woods and forests. He was totally pissed off for my being such a pervert!! I had the bravery to show off naked? Was I crazy? Also fat and ugly, as he added during his absurd showdown? What if there were kids? Didnt I know it breaks the law?
As soon as I started putting my shorts on, he said it wouldnt end like this. He asked for my ID (which I didnt have with me, having left wallets and stuff in my parents house down to the village) but he had seen me before and knows where the house is, so he actually knows who I am. He promised consequences, which I guess will be some sort of a fine or – in the worst scenario – some kind of prosecution for indecent exposure.

Whatever the case I already know I'll love to state my case and fight for my rights, and no single judge has ever condemned an invidual caught naked up a remote mountain path. Still the feeling that all of this left me with is sadness.

I'm tired to live in a country where people are obsessed with nudity, where individual freedoms and choices dont count at all, where people in the institutions dont contain themselves and act like jerks. Its really depressive.
This all happened while some nudists here in Italy have been fined because naked on a remote beach, and a guy has been fined 800 euros because he was walking downtown with a swimsuit and no shirts in the hottest day of this summer, the hotter since more than a century.

Sorry for being so long friends. I felt the urge to share this unpleasant feeling.

"It is with pity and anguish that I see
Students and seekers of the Greatest Good
Fail yet again to strike where it may be"

"I now conclude, and turn to you, signor,
And force you to confess, against your will,
The Greatest Good will be all clothes to abhor"

Those are just two brief paragraphs of a much longer text. There is no english translation freely available, but for those of my friends who didnt know it, Galileo Galilei was a strong advocate of nudism. In 1590, he wrote a little poem in iambic pentameters, known as Against the donning of the gown ("Contro il portar la toga"), in which he vehemently states how deep mankind has fallen by choosing to wear clothes.

His poem was meant as an argument against those who wearing rich heavy clothes defined themselves as good scientists. The genius who shaped his times and the centuries after his departure had discovered the effects of the "carnoval" , of the masquerade, induced by clothes. By hiding ourselves to the other people , by showing with clothes as something different from what we really are, we began to fall into a vortex of consequences which are today in front of us:

"Of any fraud, of any deception
the cause is obvious and is one only
It is being dressed all year round"

Im so sorry not to be able to translate the whole thing for you. An italian professor and scientist, Giovanni Bignami, an astronmer and a true connoisseur of the English language, many years ago translated the poem in the Shakespeare's English, but his translation isnt easy to find as it didnt have wide resonance. If any of you owns it, I think it would be a service to everybody on the net to make it available (the translator is not with us anymore, unfortunately).

I'll leave you with this paragraph (forgive the poor English):

"And so it happens that – if Someone,
being ingenious and smart,
sometimes goes around naked –
They say he's out of his mind;
the Youth will call: "look, look"
some offend, some bite Him hard
some throw stones and beat Him up,
Others want to tie Him up
like He was some kind of veal,
thats how you know how fool is people"

(English reference: http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28373)

The question came to my mind while participating in a recent thread about the kind of pictures we publish on the Naktiv site.
While reading the many comments on that thread (http://www.naktiv.net/blog/518/unacceptable-photos-for-a-naturist/), I realized one thing that may seem obvious: each one of us may have different reasons to publish naked pictures of ourselves on the Naktiv site.

And I think it could be fun and useful for all to know what these reasons are.
In other words: why do we do that?

I've read – and I am very sad for this – that some dont publish because they dont want to suffer from body shaming. Others may not entirely like the rules of the Naktiv site and avoid publishing pictures in order not to break those rules.
As one who published pictures of himself naked from time to time, I think that sharing our motives could help the whole community to open up a little bit. I'll state my reasons in the comments to this blog, I hope others will do the same.

I'd focus on two questions:
– Why do you upload pictures of yourself naked?
– Why dont you do that?

Hi there!
In these first weeks since I became active on the Naktiv site, some of you have privately asked me news about italian naturism and where it is possible to live a naked life in my country. Summer is here almost and I guess some of you are looking for a good vacation. I thought it could be useful to answer some questions in this blog. I'm not an expert, though, neither am I a representative of any kind of organization, association or enterprise in the field, I'm just a old time naturist who likes travel, hiking, sea, hills and mountains.

Italy has a long tradition with naturism/nudism.
Many activists push forward the idea behind bodyfreedom in many different ways and associations in the decades have sprung up witnessing their effort and sometimes fighting each other, which didn't help the cause.
Many of them are pretty active online and on the Internet itself new nudist communities have grown, and small events are constantly organized especially in the summer. Some of those organizations are sometimes able to interact with local administrations and obtain temporary permissions for a beach, but the absolute majority of italian municipalities are hostile to nakedness in any form and any place and will not hesitate to prosecute the violators.

Much could be said about italian laws, but be aware that our code strongly prosecutes whoever engages in "indecency" whereas the courts have a long tradition of considering "indecent" practically whoever stays naked out of the few spots where it is legal to undress. One can also be prosecuted for being naked in his house if that could be seen from outsiders or passers-by.

Thanks to the activists and to some insipired entrapreneurs, there are a few small naturist resorts in some beautiful spots. They mean as much for italian nudism as they are few. Given the natural beauties of my country and the countless beaches available, it may come as a surprise to international naked tourists to discover that areas where nudism is legally accepted are just a handful.

Thats also a reason why those italian nudists who can afford it tend to go abroad in the summer (France, Spain, Croatia) to live their vacations at the fullest. We are talking about several hundred thousands people (some talk of half a million people). There are estimates about how much it costs to italian tourism this approach to nudism in terms of lost revenues, but authorities are rarely moved by those numbers. In one case, as far as I know, international pressure from russian touristic enterprises (russian are used to be naked under the sun) pushed a northern municipal administration to dedicate a beach to naked tourists. The risk was derouting the newly rich russian tourists to Croatia or France.

If you have friends in Italy, they can also address you to several beaches where – even if not legally sanctioned – it is traditionally possibile to stay naked. If you wanna hike naked in Italy, all you can do is to take part in some events organized by activists (mostly in the North West) for a very limited access to this kind of tourism.

Given the situation I cannot suggest any friends abroad to come to Italy if they focus their vacation on nudism. They can obbviously search for those few naturist resorts I talked about (Google can easily spot them for you), but please do not expect in my country to find the same freedom standards you may be used to enjoy while visiting the northern european countries. Instead, if you care about it and a way to do it, help your local nudist organization to write to italian authorities, or start an international petition and so forth. I think that pressure from abroad could be the only way to speed up a process of opening up that has proceeded very slowly, very, in the last decades.