Nude Family Values

(5 of 5)

On the last night of camp, the kids held a talent show called "Sunny & Bare." They sang a nudist rendition of a Garth Brooks classic--"I got sand in low places"--as well as a straight version of the G.O.P. standard God Bless the U.S.A. The next day there were tearful end-of-camp goodbyes. Most of the kids were returning to areas where they have few nudist friends, and most nonnudist pals wouldn't understand the lifestyle.

I wondered how the kids would turn out. The 11-year-old camper who was so frank about her incipient puberty also said that a visitor to the Lake Como resort twice touched her leg in the pool. (Camp wasn't in session; the girl had been visiting a relative who lives at Lake Como full time.) The man was thrown out. Says the girl's mother: "Kids here are taught to talk about it. They immediately tell." But might the man have been emboldened because he saw the girl naked? As America's nudists continue to thrive, they will have to grapple with that question. They may have learned to see the naked body as mundane, but most people haven't.