I have a friend who grew up in Iowa, but spent several summers with relatives on a farm in rural Mississippi. On his first visit, he was invited by his cousins to join friends for a swim in the near-by river. When he went after his bathing suit, he was told that it wasn't necessary. His description of what followed, was a dozen fun loving kids, age 8 to 18, enjoying the cool water while nude. The skinny dipping was a daily routine, and on several occasions the kids walked to the river already nude, with no negative consequences. He describes life in the rural south as very tolerant of adolescent nudity, with nothing but healthy memories. Has anyone else experienced this type of healthy attitude while growing up?
Yes. Sort of anyway. A swimming hole was always a place where boys went skinny dipping, and I did my share of it with others. I wonder how far the kids walked to the river already nude---was this just across a field, or through the neighborhood? That part I never had a chance to do. Sounds wonderful. We just never let anyone see us.
As i already did tell in another thread, my family moved to a developing area of row houses when i was a child. There were a lot of kids in the same age range, and one of our summer funs was to jump over neighbour's lawn sprinkler at hot days' evenings. We also did use the garden hoses just for fun (obviously no one did care about water wasting or about sustainability then). As most of the gardens were not divided by fences, it was like a big playground for us. Often it happened that some of us kids got nude while playing, as i remember no one did mind about. It wasn't a rule, it just happened, often in context with water playing. So we did run around in the gardens and the environing paths naked sometimes and did stay at the neigbour houses this way also. But i don't remember that we did cover longer dictances off this little paradise in the nude too, like the original poster did tell. I also guess our parents would have stopped us if we had tried. I think this light-hearted practice did linger until we all had left primary school. So there might have been some early teens among us, but for sure no adolescents up to 18, like the op mentioned. In our own garden we did practice nudity further on, but i cant remember staying me naked at any neighbour's house after i changed over to secondary school. There were some moves in the neighbourhood and less same-aged kids, so probably this was also a reason to give up this pretty natural attitude.
Back in the eighties, I went to a summer camp run by grown-up, somewhat reformed hippies. Campers were expected to wear swimsuits during the daytime, but once or twice a week, the counselors would take us down to the lake after sunset and let us strip off completely. The camp itself was segregated by sex, with the boys' and girls' sides facing one another across the narrowest part of the lake, so the groups themselves were always all male. But every once in a while, some female camp employee -- a counselor gone AWOL from the girls' side, or one of the servers from the dining hall -- would be hanging out on the beach, soaking in the spectacle. Can't say whether it was fun for them, but it was certainly fun for me.
