'I hate clothes': What life is like as a practising nudist

Naturist Caryn Kettle, 63, always keeps her Melbourne house very warm, especially on chilly winter mornings, so that she can do her housework in the nude. “I hate clothes!” she says.

A naturist, or a nudist, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is “a person who goes naked in designated areas”– like private homes and gardens, designated beaches, and specific public spaces.

Kettle, vice-president of the Australian Naturist Federation, has been a naturist since she was 16. “It’s lovely feeling the wind on your skin. It’s liberating in that I don’t have to think about what I am going to have to wear today – that takes a huge weight off my mind,” she says.

Anything can be done sans clothing, she says. “You can vacuum, you can dust, you can polish, you can do the washing, you can chop wood.”

For hygiene reasons she draws the line at cooking nude. “Men shouldn’t barbecue naked!”

She also always keeps a sarong handy in case of door-to-door salespeople, unexpected guests, “or neighbours popping their heads over the fence”.

Kettle’s husband, 62-year-old Trevor Pitt, is also a naturist. Twenty years ago he walked along a nude beach and Kettle says, “He took off his shirt, then he took off his track-shorts, then he thought, ‘oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound’ and took off his undies and went, ‘I love this!’”

Stuart Whelan, publisher and editor of TAN, The Australian Naturist Magazine, says it’s impossible to know exactly how many naturists are in Australia. “We take some guesses,” he says. “We reckon there’s probably about four, four and half per cent, that treat naturism as part of a lifestyle.

“They do their nine-to-fives, they come home and the first thing they do is get their gear off and relax.”

Whelan says popularity in naturism waxes and wanes with the generations. The last generation was quite reserved, he says, “and now we’re starting to see the reverse of that”.

So, what sort of home features do you need to practise a naturist lifestyle? “The moment you start to get a naturist mindset, you start looking at properties differently,” Whelan says.

Kettle says, “Warmth – you have to have warmth.” Whelan, who lives in a mild climate on the NSW coast and only needs to wear clothes for a few weeks of every year, agrees and advises naturist home buyers to check, “how easily is the space heated?”

The height of kitchen counters needs to be considered too, laughs Whelan. “If the counters are too low, and you are too tall – there are hygiene concerns.”

Privacy is very important. Whelan lives on a secluded block – “We’re up high on the street,” he says. “And have a vacant bush block behind us so we don’t have anyone looking down into the backyard.”

He believes that landscaping is important and encourages aspiring naturists, especially in newer suburbs that lack trees and other natural screening, to think about their planting, and to ask themselves: “What is going to provide a quick, but effective, screen?”

After all, Whelan says, “If you have a pool, you want to be able to enjoy that pool, sans clothing.”

Fences, screens and hedges can be installed easily without planning permission. Kettle has planted a hedge of fast-growing pittosporums.

An open-plan house for entertaining is preferable, says Kettle. Naturist communities getting together do the same things all families do when they get together – barbecues, sports, drinks—“just without clothes”.

Both Whelan and Kettle emphasise that nudism has nothing to do with sexuality. “It’s not about sex at all, it’s about being comfortable in your own skin, and not liking wearing clothes basically – who wants to wear clothes?” Kettle says.

A naturist lifestyle can also bring emotional and interpersonal benefits. “[Naturists] look each other in the face. You’re connecting to the person. There’s no masks,” says Kettle.

Whelan agrees. “You start to realise that we’re all the same. Bodies come in two varieties with a multitude of variations on those two types. You have this great sense of unity: we are all the same. It breaks down seeing other people as ‘other’, and you take that out into the textile world.”