Nudist Christmas Cookies!

Yes, I hand-sculpted breasts and penises and stuck them on cookies. I was wanting to make sugar cookies because that's what we have always done in my house in the past, but wanted to put my own spin on it now that I am moved out into my apartment. This idea struck me at Meijer while looking at cookie cutters and I thought it was grand. It's celebrating Christmas AND body love at the same time! Two birds, meet one stone. I used the recipe from Sugarbelle (click here to see it).

They are really easy to make, and I have to say a lot of fun. Sculpting bodies makes you feel like you're creating; instant god complex. I experimented a bit with frosting above, but I had a terrible time trying to control the stream. Next year I may work to further than technique, but I was getting too irritated tonight. I probably redid one nipple like 10 times! It just wasn't worth it.

My First Nudist Experience AND My First 5K

The medal I won and the free shirt that I got for running the naked 5K at a nudist resort. Oh, sweet irony.

As you should know if you read some of these blog posts, body acceptance is something I strongly value. I am really drawn to the nudist philosophy regarding the human body; that is to say that the human body is natural and not merely an object to be seen in a sexual lens. If I like being naked, why is that "offensive" or "indecent" if I'm in sight of others? I have for quite a few years now enjoyed "at home nudity", like when hanging out by myself, doing yoga, or sleeping, but never before have I shared this experience with others. This summer I have been training for a 10 mile race with one of my friends in August and so I wanted to do some 5K races (3 miles) to help me prepare. In my quest for finding 5K races in Michigan, I stumbled across one held at Turtle Lake Resort: a naked 5K. I like being naked. I like running. I like trying new things. This seemed like too much fun to pass up.

I was a little nervous when I arrived, but the staff were really cool. They took me on a tour of the facility in a golf cart (still fully clothed) with other first-timers, a man and a woman. The guide explained general etiquette and showed us where the buildings were. After the tour, I parked and just went with the flow. I stripped, grabbed my backpack and towel, and found a locker. It was a little weird at first, only because I have never walked around in public naked before, nor have I prepared for a race. There was still a mental red flag telling me I was out of my comfort zone. That feeling, however, went away right as the race began. I think it was just doing something normal for me that made it feel right. I run all the time, whereas I do not go to new places, do public races, and get naked in front of strangers all the time. Once I got past the initial "new experience" feeling I was very comfortable. After the run I talked to a few people while waiting for the award ceremony, all of whom were really friendly. I reconnected with the people I took the tour with. The man liked to do different nudist events throughout the country, and the woman was just like me: she was passing through this part of Michigan and was looking for a race, and saw a normal 5K and a naked 5K and just figured the naked one would be more fun.

I really liked the atmosphere as well. People were very friendly, but weren't overbearing. In other words, I didn't feel like I needed to join a group of people to fit in. I am a heavy introvert, and after all the socialness that took place after the race waiting for the award ceremony I just wanted to walk around, lie on the beach, and take a quick swim. It was very relaxing.

As a point of interest to some viewers, as a few of my friends asked about this, I will note that uncomfortable genital bobbing was not an issue. When men exercise blood is pumping to parts of your body that need it, causing less blood flow to the genitals. This combined with the coolness that comes from the wind hitting your sweaty body makes men experience shrinkage. While running for 3 miles with your genitals looking smaller than usual may be concerning to some (in which case, I wouldn't be going to a nudist event), it makes running naked more practical. As far as breasts bouncing, I can't really comment on that from my own experience. Most of the women were topless when running, but a few did opt for a sports bra.

I also enjoyed the race aspect as well. I did pretty decent. I came in 19th place overall (there were a little over a hundred participants) and won second place for my division (20-29 year-old males). My time was 24:21. Not too shabby for my first 5K.

My overall experience was great. I would like to make this naked 5K a regular thing for my summers, and may find myself returning this summer for a day trip to work on my tan some more. If social nakedness intrigues you, I would definitely recommend Turtle Lake Resort to give it a try. As far as racing goes, I think I will feel disappointed when I have to run future races with my clothes on.

World Naked Gardening Day 2013: Theological Nudity

Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then you will see the child of the living one and you will not be afraid."

-Gospel of Thomas 37.2-3

Sadly, this year I will not be celebrating World Naked Gardening Day, as I still do not have a garden nor my own place, but I still wish to honor the idea of healthy nudity. I know some of you are wondering what happened to Ignakedio Zaragoza from last year's World Naked Gardening Day / Cinco de Mayo. He is no longer with us. We had some good times, but sadly I neglected to water him, as I am easily distracted. And I'm not much of a plant guy.

So is that it? Am I just going to talk about my past plants and not about the lack of pants? Sorry, that was bad. But no! Since I cannot celebrate properly, I will instead talk about what nudity means to me theologically speaking. Nudity is not merely an inner rebellion to tell society "screw you, I will be naked if I want to be", it is more than that. Because that is what faith and theology do: they bring meaning and symbolism to things that may look mundane to outsiders. Nakedness is very much a part of my faith.

My favorite myth of the Bible is the Garden of Eden. Here we see God making things how they are meant to function. He makes a beautiful garden, where man lives among nature and is happy, until he feels lonely, to which God responds by making a woman out of his side. Both are naked and are not ashamed (Genesis 2.25). Of course, the Promethean serpent talks Eve into eating the fruit of knowledge of Good and Evil, and as a result Adam and Eve feel shame. God asks them how they know they are naked; how could they possibly have a concept of nakedness if they were never clothed? And then we see blame being shifted, a sin which springs up from the original sin, which as we know quickly keeps rolling out of control. Cain kills Abel, etc, etc. It seems like nakedness is no longer a valid option. Sure, shame may be a product of our own insecurities, not a sin, but who cares, we are in a fallen world where we are prone to such contrasts to Eden, right? WRONG. Jesus of Nazareth comes and teaches us to be clean from our sins. Unlike the previous notion of atoning for these sins, Jesus teaches that God loves us as a father, and we don't need to worry about being forgiven if that is what we sincerely want. But he goes further, he teaches us that God's Kingdom, the realm on earth in which man lives as God made us to, is RIGHT HERE. What? Is this real life? And he teaches that we don't need to worry about what we do as much as we worry about our minds, because that is where sin starts. Righteous action naturally follows the righteous mind. This is not to say that we shouldn't be concerned with our actions, but rather that radical transformation starts by transforming the mind, not trying to manipulate actions. We don't need to "cut off our hand" out of fear of it causing us to sin and being cast away from God's presence, because our hand can't cause us to sin in the first place! We can be around sinners and heretics and prostitutes and taboo people, because we are responsible for our sins, not society or anything else! Our minds are the only thing keeping us from God's love. Pretty neat. So now, if we are supposed to be striving for God's Kingdom, AKA Eden, we can be naked. We don't need to let shame inhibit us from the liberation that comes from living life as God has created us to live despite our sins.

So nudity to me is not just being naked, it's about freedom. It symbolizes the freedom from the senseless shame that sin can bring, things that humans have concocted in their own minds. It's a symbol for my life in a world which I am actively working to be unstained from. In fact, early church baptisms were performed totally in the buff, including women (The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, 3rd century CE)! Modesty was highly valued then, yet nothing but your body was permitted to be cleansed in the baptism. Baptism represents the purging of this-worldly corruption. It symbolizes rebirth. In this new life, this acceptance of Jesus' teachings, we can truly stand naked and unashamed before a world that is constantly trying to clothe us with shame. This nudity showed renewal.

Early Christian painting of baptism in the nude

So that's what nakedness is to me in the mythic realms of my mind. It is liberation from wallowing in sin; it is intimacy with God by living how he made me to live; it is a badge of my rebirth. I hope you all can get naked and go water something, and have a great World Naked Gardening Day!

Art Project: Naked People of the World

I made this for my art class. The assignment was to mimic a painter from the 1900s in America, so I chose to imitate Jackson Polluck's style. Of course, the assignment also called for me to create my own meaning behind Polluck's method of painting. So I painted some general continent shapes and spattered flesh colored paint on top of it, symbolizing the naturalness of the human body. It kind of sucks in some ways, I should have watered down the paint some more to make better spatter patterns. And the brown blends in with the green a little too much. So you know, this was not supposed to be a racial commentary.

World Naked Gardening Day AND Cinco de Mayo

What a day. As all of you should know, it's Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican and American holiday celebrating the the Mexican victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Most Americans celebrate by eating Mexican food and drinking tequila. Seeing as I do not intend on getting drunk at my parent's house, I went out and got some authentic Mexican food: Taco Bell.

2 bean burritos and a cheese roll up. Yum.

But that is only the beginning. Because what just so happens to also be today? World Naked Gardening Day. BOOM! And no, for you skeptics out there I did not invent this. Don't believe me? Click here. This is actually the eighth one. I believe it falls on either the last Saturday in April or the first Saturday in May (how they choose this, I do not know). But the idea is simple: nude up and do some gardening. Do it by yourself, or with family or friends. If you don't have a garden, maybe just go out and buy a small tropical plant for your windowsill. The purpose of World Naked Gardening Day is to promote our bodies as natural, not as something taboo or only for "behind closed doors" activities. It's about living comfortably in your skin and getting closer to nature.

http://wngd.org/

But if you are like me and live in a small house with a small backyard with absolutely no privacy, what do you do? Now naturally I want to just screw the judgement and go outside au naturel and plant some shit. But I cannot do this for 2 reasons. Reason 1: it could get me into trouble with the law, and I don't want to chance it getting in the way of my future job if someone reported me. Reason 2: I am living with my parents this summer and we do not have a garden. So, what am I to do? Do I want to go out and get a little Pansy for my window for me to care for without clothes on? Yes and no. I have never been a big gardener (although I did work for a garden center for two summers) so I am not the type to just get excited to care for some simple flower. I know people like that, and good for you, do what you are passionate about, but a dainty flower ain't gonna cut it for me. So yes, I will buy a plant from the store and care for it whilst naked. But no, it's not a Pansy. I BOUGHT A VENUS FLY TRAP. That's right. I am taking World Naked Gardening Day to the next level. Why have a pretty flower when you can have a carnivorous monster plant to guard your room from pesky flies? And given the nature of Cinco de Mayo, I will name him "Ignakedio Zaragoza", after Ignacio Zaragoza, the general who led the Mexican forces to victory in the Battle of Puebla.

Taco Bell. Nudity. Venus fly trap. This may just be my best Cinco de Mayo yet.

Ignakedio Zaragoza

Getting Naked

My first issue I want to tackle since rebooting my blog is NUDITY (given the title of the blog and all). I am just going to say it: I enjoy being naked. I don't really hide this, my close friends know it, but it's something I joke about more than take super seriously. But it's part of the genuine me. I'm not an exhibitionist, I don't have an urge for people to see me naked, but I think it is A) comfortable and B) keeps my mind healthy.

A) Why is being naked comfortable, even in non sexual contexts? Well, try it. It's the way you feel the air on the parts of your body that are normally suffocated all day. It's the way tight garments aren't constantly hugging your skin. I like clothes, they are very useful and make social situations less awkward and they keep me warm from colder climates. But frankly, if I've had a stressful day, the first thing I want to do when I walk in the door is shed my clothes and relax. Nothing sexual about it, just freedom.

B) What do I mean by "keep my mind healthy"? As a young man, of course I have a sex drive. But that doesn't mean it can't be controlled. It's merely classical conditioning. I'm attracted to female bodies, and for a long time I only saw the naked body in sexual situations. Naturally in time I associated nudity with sex, just seeing a Victoria Secret commercial would make me think about sex. And then seeing a girl wearing a swimsuit or a low cut dress would make me think about sex. But the more I accept my own body as a natural thing, holding meaning and value apart from its sexuality, the more I view others the same way. I can look at a naked woman without thinking about her as a potential sexual partner. It doesn't mean I'm not attracted to the female form any more, it just means I can see that human bodies serve greater purposes outside the realm of my penis.

B cont.) With this desexualization of the body comes good body image, too. If you see your naked body simply as a vehicle for sex, every imperfection is going to be shaming. You will think you are too fat, skinny, ugly, pimply, etc. And this is really damaging to your psyche. Your naked body is biologically who you are, how can you truly love yourself if you are ashamed of your body?

I heard a lot about modesty this year in church, and saw a lot of blame being shifted towards women to cover up. But this is wrong, the problem isn't bodies, the problem is our mindset. And if you are a Christian, how are we are going to treat woman's outfits as a scapegoat for our own iniquities and then claim that we are following Jesus? Didn't Jesus say "And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell (Mark 9.47 NIV)?" Our instructions are not to change the person triggering our sin, but rather to change ourselves. Pluck out your own damn eyes. We are to take responsibility for our sins, not pawn the responsibility on to others. And on top of that, this seems to me to be obvious hyperbole to draw attention to our often misled concept of sin. An eye or a hand can't cause you to sin. It's in your heart/mind. It's how you think about things, which in turn affects how you act on things. Changing your heart protects you from sin. Not plucking out your eye, and not shaming people to cover up their bodies. How are we to take control of our sinful attitudes towards human bodies? I can't tell you a universal 10 step program, not everyone is me. I would suggest reflection and prayer; really think about how you are viewing the human body and women in general. But I can say a great step for me was getting comfortable with my own body, and respecting it as more than a sex machine.