I had been reviewing some photos I'd taken naked in the woods recently - thinking about the power of the effect of seeing an attractive body fully naked in the midst of a landscape, whether natural or manmade. That "wow" factor elicited by the starkness of the nudity, placed matter-of-factly into the context of our day-to-day lives - it's one of my favorite things in the world, and it's a large part of the reason I continue to shoot nude photography.
Then I was standing at the window, looking out at the lush greenery of the grass growing wild in the early spring, and I thought back to a time last summer when I had the pleasure of waking up at camp, and taking some pictures fully naked in the bright morning sunshine, at the edge of a wide, open field. And I got to thinking.
It's difficult to find people with which to celebrate the beauty of the human body. Join the perverts, and they'll want to make everything about sex (and anyway, what you're willing to do counts more than how you look). Join the nudists, and they'll scold you for rationing beauty (while insisting that fat, old bodies are as beautiful as young, trim ones). Isn't there a middle ground?
Where do I sign up to join a retreat where you get to hang out with beautiful naked people, in a way that's respectful, yet honest and life-affirming? What a salve for the soul that would be. I'd pay good money for that experience. Nudism can be that in its best moments, but it's always left up to chance, and you risk being ostracized if you dare admit that you enjoy the view.
I understand why perverts have to hide from nudists, but why do I have to hide from nudists the thing that distinguishes me from the perverts? It's like, on the scale of erotic aestheticism, I'm too focused on attractiveness to be a nudist, but not focused enough on sex to be a pervert. I don't belong anywhere.
If I had any power or influence or money or charisma, I'd open a naked beauty therapy (NBT) resort. I'd hire attractive people to walk around, hang out, and socialize with guests fully naked (guests could be naked, too). While it wouldn't be the focus, photography would be permitted, but only if done openly and with consent of the participants (this would be something I'd look for when hiring). However, people wouldn't be made to feel dirty just for asking.
Why can't such a place exist? Would it just devolve into a sex resort? Why, then, am I so hung up on creating a fantasy that's unrealistic? And why don't I get to have nice things, just because other people would break them? Would I feel differently if I'd had different experiences in my life - like, if I felt capable of initiating intimate relationships with attractive people I meet? Why should I be punished, by my own mind, for not sleeping around? What kind of programming is that?
I wish someday somebody could come along and give me some answers to the questions that have plagued me all my life. I wish life actually had a meaning and an order that we could discern, instead of being arbitrary, and open to interpretation. I wish I didn't live in a society that felt oppressive in spite of its freedoms, made up of barely-intelligent apes who are all too easily exploited and manipulated by the corrupt overlords at the top, for the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. I wish I didn't have a condition that causes even the things I enjoy to stress me out. And I wish I didn't have such eccentric tastes, so I could more easily find people to share them with, and enjoy them without feeling guilty about it.
More than anything, I think I'm just tired of suffering for no good reason at all. If there were such a thing as mercy, I never would have existed in the first place. No, that's selfish. I know I make [a very few] people happy by being here. Is it wrong for me to resent having to suffer for the pleasure of others? I just don't understand why it's wrong for me to ask for something in return. I can't even ask for what I want in life, let alone have the means to acquire it. I've even spent years solidifying my reputation, and searching for alternatives to simply asking attractive people to let me see them naked.
Weirdly, even online, it's hard to find attractive people who want to be seen naked - real people that don't feel marketed as a commercial product to be consumed impersonally. It's like the entire world has a vendetta against beauty, because every time I catch a glimpse of it, overbearing forces are hot on its heels, ready to snuff it out. Religious conservatives condemn the sin of lust, while liberal feminists decry the objectifying 'male gaze'.
I can't seek a purpose in fighting for revolution because I don't even have a side. There's no army to join. I'm alone, and if I were to rise up, I would be squashed like a fly caught between the jaws of a vise. So I have to hide myself, like I have to hide my body, my beauty, my passion, my joy, and pretend to be something else. But why? There's no reward at the end of it all. What is it all for? What horrid thing did I do in my previous life, and why do I deserve this punishment if I can't even remember what it was?
