The perfect voyeur's position!
June 1999
We kick off this time with a letter from Barry
Freeman, left over from TBE7. Barry has treated himself to a new PC - or at
least a new printer - and writes in a very elegant font:
Dear SUN,
Happy New Year! Let's hope for a great year of sunny days and happy memories
to take us into the new millennium. Well now we've got this years trendy word
out of the way I'm just writing to comment on the ITV programme Full Frontal
in Flip-flops. Quite a casual title, eh? I found it rather amusing that the
BBC alternative at the same time was Crystal Balls!
Full credit to the production team for a serious look at naturists and
naturism, warts and all. I'm glad that, apart from the obligatory inclusion of
H&E and the glamour girls, it showed normal everyday people expressing
themselves as carefree naturists, with no hang-ups. Particular credit, I think,
should go to the bride with a radical mastectomy and to the Morton family,
especially their teenage daughter for her very adult views.
Studland(s) - and don't we wish there was more than one! - came across very
well. I'm sure we'll see many more people on the beach this summer who have
watched the programme and frantically scribbled that name on their calendar for
a day trip this year (for the right reasons, or possibly the wrong ones). Jan
Welsh, Mark Nisbet and Colin James all made valid points and
even Julian Homer admitted that the dunes had been used by the earliest
Studland nudists. I had to chuckle at his excuse for the designated zone - "It
may be shocking for people on their trip round the nature reserve to come across
naked people". My immediate thought was that if people didn't want to
feast their eyes on nudists whilst remaining textile then why do the hoards of
chain ferry passengers choose to walk along the shoreline through our zone?
Surely they could take the bus or drive down to the Knoll or Middle Beach car
parks? No, they want to see us at play and secretly want to join in, but they
haven't got the guts to do so. They are the two old ladies who go miles out of
their way in the height of a scorching hot summer, dressed in their winter
coats, just to say to each other "Oooh, look at him - it's disgusting,
isn't it?" when both are secretly wishing they were 20 again and could
join in.
Roy Ellis echoed my little soap-box point by asking why, if our part
of the beach is designated naturist, is it not exclusively naturist? Yes, this
should be the case in England where the amount of beach space available to
naturists is so pathetically small, and should not be invaded by textiles whose
only excuse for being there is that it is cheaper and less embarrassing for them
than hiring a soft-porn video after a night at the pub and a chicken vindaloo
carry-out. Why watch two naked girls bouncing around playing tennis on a
17" TV when you can sit amongst live naked bodies playing boules on a sunny
beach?
I was at work when the programme was broadcast but fortunately my lady friend
recorded it for me, so I was able to rewind some bits and analyse them. I was
particularly intrigued by the large family group -5 adult males, 3 adult females
and 5 children - who had plonked themselves down in mid-beach near the exit
track and close to the ice-cream wagon. Using two beach umbrellas, two
windbreaks (behind them so as not to obstruct their view - nor stop the onshore
wind!), a cool box and a tent shelter, they remained textile whilst 'enjoying'
the naked strollers, swimmers and those queuing for ice-cream. The perfect
voyeur's position! I noticed that they also had a fully loaded baby-buggy which,
as I recall from experience, is not at all easy to pull across soft sand. They
had made a well-planned foray just to reach our bit of Studland, only to sit in
their clammy cossies and gawp. Why'?
Barry
Freeman
Why indeed? Some textile behaviour is like the peace
of God - it passeth all understanding. As we have said before, there is little
chance of making our area exclusively nudist: to do so might even prove
counter-productive, inasmuch as it would strengthen the National Trust's currently shaky
case for restricting us. All we can do is grin and bear it (pun intended!)
and hope that more and more of them will be converted to our way of thinking, so
that the balance might be redressed in the long term.
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