The Telegraph's review of My Daughter the Teenage Nudist

[Anna]

From the British Newspaper - the Telegraph

There's 69 comments to the article on the original web page (surely
more since you are reading this after I posted it).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9011160/My-Daughter-the-Teenage-Nudist-Channel-4-review.html

http://tinyurl.com/6wx5dmm

Michael Deacon reviews Channel 4's somewhat titillating documentary My
Daughter the Teenage Nudist.

My Daughter the Teenage Nudist. Interesting title. Not just for the
phrase “teenage nudist” but for the word “daughter”. In this Channel 4
documentary about young naturists, at least half were male. Yet the
person who chose the title focused on the female. It’s almost as if,
rather than provide a mature and sensitive examination of naturism,
they were trying to pull in viewers via the promise of hot babes in
the buff.

To be fair, it would be pretty hard to provide a mature and sensitive
examination of naturism, because naturism is intrinsically funny. As
we saw, it isn’t so much the way naturists look as the way they talk,
an endearing mix of inadvertent innuendos (“Luke’s comfortable with
his body… it rubs off on you”) and earnestness. Their nudity isn’t
just a bit of fun. It’s political, a “protest”, a solution to our
“body issues”, and even, excitingly, a form of feminism. At last, a
feminist movement that young men can really get behind.

Last night a 25-year-old woman called Alex explained that it’s
“positive to see people’s bodies in a non-sexual context”. To prove it
she stood around on a busy street, topless. A policeman, valiantly
trying to maintain eye contact, told her to put her top back on. While
Alex was admonishing the policeman for his sexism (walking around
topless in public is “a freedom you’re denied as a woman”), a fully
dressed man, brandishing a mobile phone, asked if it was OK to take a
photograph of her. “No, it is not OK!” she snapped, clearly affronted
by this invasion of her privacy.

Naturists, said the documentary’s narrator, are “rebelling against
images of ‘the body beautiful’ peddled by the media”. Well, perhaps
the non-beautiful naturists are. But, as one female passer-by pointed
out, Alex and her fellow naturist Daryl (who was also topless) were as
slim and pert as almost any model or celebrity you’d see in a
magazine. “You’re talking about making people feel better about
themselves, but you’ve put two beautiful people out there,” said the
passer-by to a male naturist who was, on this occasion, clothed.
“Personally, I think you should have done it.”

“Why’s that?” said the clothed naturist, innocently.

Several times we were told that joining a naturist group helps you
come to terms with your physical imperfections. As a non-naturist I’d
have thought that an unattractive person will always feel deflated by
the sight of an attractive person, especially if both are naked. But
since so many of the documentary’s subjects said naturism had boosted
their self-esteem, I suppose I’ll have to believe them. All the same,
I’m not sure I’d agree with their thoughts on why naturism has a
“major image problem”. They think it’s because too many naturists are
old. I suspect it’s more because too many naturists don’t look very
good naked. To get rid of the image problem, you’d need to decide that
only the beautiful are allowed to be naturists. But that would run
contrary to the thinking about “body issues”.

The good news, as far as the image problem goes, was that in general
the naturists seemed cheerful and well-meaning. A pity the documentary
didn’t ask them more probing questions, though. What do naturists
think of flashers, for example? Can flashing be a form of public
protest too? If a man in a park exposed himself to a woman, could he,
like one of the documentary’s naturists, justify himself by saying,
“Yep, my penis is out – do not judge me”? It’s a fascinating area.