Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Naked and Unashamed: Nudism from Six Points of View
    Naked and Unashamed: Nudism from Six Points of View
    Naked and Unashamed: Nudism from Six Points of View
    Ebook77 pages54 minutes

    Naked and Unashamed: Nudism from Six Points of View

    By William Welby, Tim Forcer and Stephen Glass

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    1930s Britain was a hotbed of utopian ideals in which William Welby, an advertising manager, was drawn to the burgeoning nudist movement.

    Welby's quest for understanding culminated in the landmark publication Naked and Unashamed, a groundbreaking exploration of nudism by a British author, the success of which encouraged him to wri

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWolfbait
    Release dateAug 12, 2024
    ISBN9781917298018
    Naked and Unashamed: Nudism from Six Points of View

    Related to Naked and Unashamed

    Titles in the series (3)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Photography For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Rated R for Nudity

      Sep 12, 2019

      Rated R for Nudity
      4 min read

    • Article

      Words From The Wise

      Mar 30, 2020

      Words From The Wise
      2 min read

    • Article

      OPINION Bareness

      Oct 13, 2019

      OPINION Bareness
      2 min read

    • Article

      Less Is More

      Aug 19, 2022

      Less Is More
      7 min read

    • Article

      Art/ Porn/ Star

      Apr 22, 2021

      I don’t think it’s farfetched to say that to most gay men François Sagat is as famous as Lady Gaga or Jesus. His iconography is certainly as well-known — the tattooed scalp, muscled physique, and a generous posterior that is more of a watermelon than

      11 min read

    • Article

      On A Bear Hunt

      Feb 17, 2022

      On A Bear Hunt
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nude Testament

      Feb 6, 2022

      Nude Testament
      7 min read

    • Article

      Vogue Australia

      Jun 30, 2024

      CHRISTINE CENTENERA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Executive Editor JESSICA MONTAGUE Executive Producer and Talent Director RIKKI KEENE Visual Director ALISON VENESS Editor at Large KATRINA ISRAEL ART [email protected] Creative Director MANDY ALEX Deputy Art Directo

      2 min read

    • Article

      Fine Art Focus

      Oct 30, 2018

      Fine Art Focus
      5 min read

    • Article

      Feeling Myself

      May 27, 2022

      Feeling Myself
      4 min read

    • Article

      Being NAKED

      Jul 30, 2020

      Being NAKED
      4 min read

    • Article

      For Your Eyes Only

      Apr 13, 2023

      For Your Eyes Only
      6 min read

    • Article

      Naked AMBITIONS

      Sep 1, 2022

      Naked AMBITIONS
      5 min read

    • Article

      The History of the CAMEL TOE

      Nov 17, 2021

      The History of the CAMEL TOE
      2 min read

    • Article

      Putt Like A Pro

      Jul 27, 2023

      Putt Like A Pro
      2 min read

    • Article

      Who’s Afraid Of A Naked Trans Woman?

      Jul 23, 2019

      AS A 30-YEAR-OLD WOMAN, I CAN DO A LOT OF THINGS. I can vote. I can drink. I can drop hundreds of dollars on therapy to help me work through my deeply self-destructive attachment style and still let men treat me like shit. But there’s one thing I rec

      9 min read

    • Article

      Leviathan

      Aug 10, 2022

      After we killed the passengers, we put the bodies in one of the low-pressure, unheated storage compartments. Some people had wanted to have some kind of solemn burial-in-space thing; that was too ghoulish for most of us, though. Mostly the ones we ki

      25 min read

    • Article

      WHEN SUPERMODELS RULED the WORLD

      Jan 11, 2022

      When Felix Kramer, the noted art historian who serves as General Director of the Museum Kunstpalast in Duesseldorf first came up with the idea of mounting an exhibition dedicated to fashion photography of the 1990s, it was a stroke of genius to invit

      3 min read

    • Article

      Viking Barbie

      Jul 23, 2019

      Viking Barbie
      2 min read

    • Article

      How To Find Gender Joy In 2023

      Dec 23, 2022

      If you have been feeling low or dysphoric lately, I hope these words help you to cultivate more euphoria in your life. But where do you begin when trying to do so? As Elliot (they/ them), a UK-based transmasc non-binary person tells me: “A lot of the

      5 min read

    • Article

      Stepping Out Of The Shadows

      Dec 14, 2021

      Stepping Out Of The Shadows
      10 min read

    • Article

      FROM Fetish TO FASHION

      Jan 22, 2019

      FROM Fetish TO FASHION
      4 min read

    • Article

      Free In My Body

      Feb 25, 2022

      I only had nine years for my body to just exist. And then I got my period. My hips grew wider, my breasts developed, and my ass got rounder. Yet the biggest change was how people treated me. My bullies stopped tormenting me. Growing up in Lebanon, I

      2 min read

    • Article

      All Dolled Up!

      Jan 27, 2022

      All Dolled Up!
      2 min read

    • Article

      American Bedroom

      Dec 5, 2022

      American Bedroom
      2 min read

    • Article

      Krystal Hill

      Sep 12, 2021

      Krystal Hill
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Naked and Unashamed

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Naked and Unashamed - William Welby

      Illustrations by Stephen Glass

      Eternal Youth

      Making Friends

      The Sun-worshipper

      Ship Ahoy!

      Sunlight and Shadow

      Curves at the Casement

      Poolside Playtime

      News Junkie

      Sunny Salutations

      Image No. 2

      Making Friends. Mina Felgate (right).

      Foreword

      THE PERIOD BETWEEN the two world wars saw great upheaval in European society. Political and social structures changed. There were booms and busts, and motor and air transport transformed the economies of many countries. Against this backdrop of turmoil, Germany’s Freikörperkultur movement expanded, stimulating the creation of nudist groups in other European nations. In England, the first clubs were founded from 1924, and in the 1930s formal associations were set up, while magazines and books featuring social nudity became available.

      William Welby was born in 1883 in Canterbury, Kent. He spent his early working life as an auctioneer’s clerk in London and on a Canadian farm, after which he became an advertising copywriter. Following World War I, he progressed to the position of advertising manager. Advertising is a profession that relies on the power of words to present information simply and clearly and in the best possible light. In his writing on nudism, Welby usually avoided being overly evangelical, and instead, would set out the facts and arguments for the reader to consider—although it was clear what he thought the conclusion should be.

      A surprising element of this objective aspiration is that Welby did not experience social nudity until after he had written Naked and Unashamed, his first book on the subject. That fact is declared, along with a report on his first visit to a nudist club, in the preface to the book’s second edition. The re-publication was necessary because the first edition had been exhausted in three or four weeks. Together with the favourable comments the book received, this prompted Welby to try nudism for himself. I feel obliged to point out that there was only a month between the publication of the first and second editions in July and August 1934!

      Naked and Unashamed was illustrated with 15 full-page illustrations from naturist magazines, evenly split between classic female studies and mixed groups, the subjects uniformly slim and fit (unfortunately, rights issues mean those specific images cannot be reproduced in this new edition). In his chapter The Æsthetic Point of View, Welby says that people suffering from deformities… would not wish to expose these, and that association with members of a fine physique will encourage the less fit to acquire… shapeliness and grace… if they will only take the necessary steps. These days, inclusivity and acceptance are implicit or even explicit in the stated aims and objectives of naturist organisations.

      Of course, that is just one of many changes in attitudes towards nudity—Welby provides a review of these across cultures and history in Chapter I, to give background to his own arguments that social nudity is healthy in mind, body and spirit. Of the Six Points of View, Welby considers the moral one to be the most important. In Chapter II and elsewhere he points out that there is a difference between nudity and sex, and the naked body is not intrinsically erotic. These and other points are well known to nudists, but they must have been quite novel to many in his intended readership. In the chapter on health, Welby contends that skimpy clothing is not only titillating but unhealthy in various ways. He states that for the optimum production of hormones, the genitals must be exposed to sunlight. Similarly, he asserts that full body visibility is good for mental health: not just for adult nudists but also their nudist children, who will avoid neuroses caused by misunderstandings about sex, reproduction and puberty.

      If the arguments—summarised in Welby’s concluding The Commonsense Point of View—are commonplace today, why bother reading this book? I think it is helpful to understand where organised naturism came from, and how it was seen in a society where it was not only a novelty but an imported novelty. Until the early 1930s, not one British author had published a book about nudism: what information there was came primarily from isolated articles in health magazines and from foreign publications.

      Welby’s three books were among several nudist titles published by Thorsons. These included Among the Nudists by US authors Frances and Mason Merrill. That was reprinted in 2006, and is even available as an ebook, but until recently anyone interested in contemporary British writing on the subject had to search the second-hand market, where the books’ prices can be quite high. A few months ago, naturist author Will Forest posted on goodreads.com about his Brazilian

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1