The Place Where Nobody Asks Who You Voted For

At a nudist resort, one of the most refreshing things you can leave behind isn't your clothing. It's the noise.

Written by: The Barefoot Nudist

Spend enough time at a nudist resort and eventually you begin to notice something peculiar.

Something is missing.

It isn't just neckties, shoes, belts, dresses, uniforms, designer labels, or bathing suits.

It's politics.

Not completely, of course. Put enough people together and almost any subject will eventually find its way into a conversation. But compared with everyday life outside the gates, it can be remarkable how rarely politics seems to come up.

And perhaps even more remarkable?

Nobody seems to miss it.

The Conversation Starts Differently

Think about how many conversations begin in everyday life.

Did you see what happened today?

Did you hear what that politician said?

Can you believe what's happening in Washington?

Did you see that story on the news?

Have you seen what people are arguing about online?

We live in an environment where we're constantly being invited to have an opinion.

News alerts buzz in our pockets.

Social media feeds deliver a conveyor belt of outrage.

Television panels debate the controversy of the hour.

Algorithms discover exactly which subjects irritate us most and conveniently provide an endless supply of them.

Then you arrive at a nudist resort.

You put down the phone.

You take off your clothes.

You sit beside a pool, around a campfire, at the bar, in a golf cart, or under the shade of a tree.

Someone walks over.

And instead of asking what you think about Washington, they ask:

"So, where are you from?"

And suddenly you're talking.

Really talking.

Everybody Has a Story

One of the great pleasures of spending time in a nudist community is discovering how interesting ordinary people actually are.

Someone was in the military.

Someone spent thirty years teaching school.

Someone drove trucks across the country.

Someone built a business.

Someone sold everything and started traveling in an RV.

Someone has visited forty countries.

Someone restores old cars.

Someone loves woodworking.

Someone knows everything imaginable about barbecue.

Someone has been married for forty years.

Someone just discovered naturism six months ago.

And the conversations wander beautifully from there.

Where have you traveled?

What kind of RV do you have?

How did you discover nudism?

What do you do for a living?

Where did you grow up?

What's the best place you've ever visited?

What are you cooking tonight?

Before long, complete strangers are laughing together.

Nobody needed to know which box anyone checked on a ballot first.

Maybe Clothing Isn't the Only Uniform We Take Off

There may be something deeper happening here.

In the textile world, we constantly broadcast information about ourselves before saying a word.

Our clothing can suggest occupation, income, status, religion, hobbies, favorite teams, musical tastes, social groups and sometimes even politics.

We become surprisingly skilled at categorizing one another.

Executive.

Blue collar.

Conservative.

Liberal.

Wealthy.

Working class.

City person.

Country person.

Our brains build little folders for people almost instantly.

Then naturism does something fascinating.

It scrambles the filing system.

At the pool, the CEO and the electrician are simply two people trying to decide whether the water is warm enough.

The retired teacher and the truck driver discover they both love fishing.

The person from New York and the person from rural South Carolina discover they've visited the same campground.

People who might have walked past each other a thousand times in everyday life suddenly have an hour-long conversation.

Without many of our usual social signals, there is less information available for deciding who somebody is supposed to be.

So you have to do something radical.

You have to talk to them.

The Outside World Doesn't Disappear

Naturist resorts aren't magical bubbles.

The people inside them still have mortgages.

They still have jobs.

They still worry about their families.

They still vote.

They still have beliefs.

They still disagree about things.

They still know what is happening in the world.

But something changes when those things stop dominating the room.

For a few hours or a weekend, nobody seems particularly interested in turning every conversation into a referendum on society.

There is a pool waiting.

Dinner is almost ready.

Someone just challenged you to pickleball.

A golf cart is headed toward the clubhouse.

The campfire needs another log.

Someone has opened a bottle of wine.

And there is a fascinating person sitting beside you whose story you haven't heard yet.

The world's arguments can wait.

Ninety Percent of the Time, Nobody Even Brings It Up

Ask people who regularly spend time at nudist resorts and you may hear versions of the same observation:

Politics simply doesn't seem to come up very often.

Not because everyone agrees.

Almost certainly, they don't.

That's what makes it interesting.

A nudist resort can contain people from wildly different backgrounds, professions, regions, economic circumstances and philosophies.

Yet somehow they manage to spend an entire afternoon together without needing to determine who belongs to which political tribe.

There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about that.

You meet the person before the opinion.

You hear the story before the ideology.

You discover the common ground before searching for the disagreement.

And usually there is plenty of common ground.

Maybe We're Hungrier for This Than We Realize

Modern life is extraordinarily connected.

And somehow it can feel increasingly difficult to simply connect.

We know the opinions of thousands of strangers we've never met.

We know what celebrities think.

We know what politicians think.

We know what commentators think.

We know what somebody's cousin's coworker posted online at 2:13 in the morning.

But how often do we sit beside someone we've never met and spend an hour discovering their story?

Naturist environments seem unusually good at creating those moments.

Perhaps because vulnerability changes the atmosphere.

Perhaps because social status becomes harder to advertise.

Perhaps because people arrive intending to relax.

Perhaps because being naked makes pretending to be terribly important feel a little ridiculous.

Or perhaps everyone simply understands, consciously or otherwise:

We're here to enjoy being alive for a while.

The Quiet Might Be One of Naturism's Greatest Luxuries

People often imagine the defining feature of a nudist resort is nudity.

And technically, they're right.

But after spending enough time in one, nudity can become surprisingly ordinary.

Eventually something else becomes noticeable.

The quiet.

Not literal silence.

There may be music playing.

People are laughing.

Golf carts are rolling past.

Someone is yelling across the pool.

Dinner conversations stretch late into the evening.

It's a different kind of quiet.

The absence of all the cultural noise demanding that we constantly choose sides.

For a little while, nobody needs your political identity.

Nobody needs your résumé.

Nobody needs your social-media profile.

Nobody needs to know which news channel you watch.

They just want to know your name.

And maybe your story.

In a world increasingly determined to tell us all the reasons we should disagree with one another, perhaps that's one of the most unexpectedly beautiful things about naturism.

We arrive without clothes.

And every once in a while, we discover we've left something much heavier behind.