For naturists, bare is only fair

[Times photos: Bill Serne] John Palm walks along a beach at Fort De Soto Park. He and other naturists were thwarted in their plan to turn a part of the park into a clothing-optional area. “Clothing is an obstruction to being closer to nature,” Palm says.

By JEANNE MALMGREN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 10, 2002

Lots of folks oppose a nude beach at Fort De Soto Park as antifamily, but one local naturist points out that human differences aren't even skin deep.

ST. PETERSBURG -- John Palm strolls along the beach, water bottle and flip-flops in hand. A breeze ruffles his waist-length ponytail. Waves lap at his feet.

Palm is wearing shorts and a Friends of Fort De Soto T-shirt. They're awfully confining.

He's 36 years old. He works as an ultrasonographer at University Community Hospital in Tampa, specializing in radioactive seed implants for prostate cancer patients.

He owns his own home. Used to compete in triathlons. Loves a good volleyball match. Owns three cats. Hopes to get married and have kids someday soon.

He's also a naturist -- someone who's fond of taking off his clothes in places where others feel more comfortable covered up. He finds it refreshing to be, as the naturists say, "sky-clad."

The license plate on Palm's 1988 Dodge Caravan says it all: SKNYDPN.

Tampa Area Naturists say that a clothing-optional area on southern Pinellas’ busiest beach would leave much more than footprints -- as much as $1-million a year in tourist revenue.

"Clothing is an obstruction to being closer to nature," he says in a soft voice. "It's a much more enriching experience (to be nude). It just feels better."

Palm didn't feel so good last month, when he and 50 other naturists were thwarted in their plan to turn a part of Fort De Soto County Park into a clothing-optional area. At a meeting in Clearwater, the Pinellas County Park Board voted down the proposal 6-1.

Palm and his group, Tampa Area Naturists, were shot down despite a glossy 45-page booklet full of charts, graphs and other data they had spent six months preparing. Their main argument was that a clothing-optional area on southern Pinellas' busiest beach would bring in enormous tourist revenue -- as much as $1-million a year, they contended.

A lot of people doubted nudists could have such deep pockets.

Nudists have heard all the jokes. They know what people say about them. They're aware that the subject usually brings up nervous giggles.

Sometimes, the jokes are downright unkind. Last year, when a woman swimming nude at Pasco County nudist resort Lake Como was severely mauled by an alligator, the talk radio jocks had a field day.

Pasco is home to several nationally known nude resorts, but Pinellas County traditionally has been unfriendly to nudists. In 1999, the county commission voted against a clothing-optional beach. Evidently it hasn't changed its mind.

"Absolutely not. Nada. No way," commissioner John Morroni said recently, when asked if he could envision a nude beach in Pinellas.

Undaunted, the naturists press on, in a public relations campaign that is akin to Sisyphus and his rock. They want you to know there's nothing to be afraid of. They're just regular folks, they insist.

"We want to do everything everybody else does at the beach: make sand castles, throw a Frisbee, look for shells, play in the surf," said Palm. "We just want to do it with a little more tolerant dress code."

Palm was arrested four times for following such a code. The first two times, he and friends were on a spoil island in Bunce's Pass, just off the tip of Fort De Soto, a place often visited by nude sunbathers and undercover police. Both times he took his case to court and won. The last two arrests were for disorderly conduct, when Palm helped organize beach rallies in honor of National Nude Weekend. He paid a small fine and got six months' probation. The last time, he was banned from the park for a year.

Leslie and David Hardy are in their 60s. They just celebrated their 42nd year of marriage. They're the parents of two grown sons and four grandchildren. He was an accountant; she taught middle and high school math.

Several years ago, the couple retired to Pasco County. They took up residence at a place where they had vacationed many times, Lake Como. Like Palm, they're eager to bust the stereotype of nudists as sexual deviants or just plain wackos.

"There are people from all walks of life in the naturist community," said Leslie Hardy. "We've met judges, doctors, teachers, blue-collar workers. If people think some weird things are going on (in the nudist community), they need to remember that there are weird things going on in every community. You see it in governments, you see it in churches."

Part of the naturist mantra is that when clothes come off, so do social barriers. People stop posturing and start acting like themselves.

"The real person comes forward," said Hardy. "You're not hiding behind that layer of textiles."

John Palm says that naturists don’t want to offend anyone. Nude beach-going, he says, is a “non-threatening, family form of recreation.”

For that reason, they claim a clothing-optional beach is a safe, relaxed place to be. People are friendly. No one's harassing anyone else. Everyone is acting respectably.

For 10 years, Miami's Haulover Beach has welcomed nude sunbathers -- more than 1-million a year, about 5,000 to 8,000 on an average weekend.

The quarter-mile strip of beach is watched over by lifeguards (yes, there's a waiting list) and a volunteer corps of Beach Ambassadors who wear colorful safari hats (but nothing else) and walk the beach, reminding people of the rules:

No overt sexual activity.

No photos without first asking permission.

No gawking.

No littering.

No touching of sexual organs, unless it's to put on sunscreen, brush off sand or "attend to an itch."

Haulover visitors pay $4 to park for the day. Tampa Area Naturists envisions a similar pay-per-use fee for a clothing-optional beach here. That, combined with lodging and other visitor costs, could make nude recreation a big money-maker for Pinellas County.

"All that money we spend going to Miami for a month at a time, to visit Haulover, we could be spending that here," said David Hardy. "And we'd rather be here. It's closer to home."

The local group also proposes that signs be posted at the edge of any clothing-optional area, warning beach-walkers that past that point, they might encounter nude sunbathers.

What if a child or someone else wandered past the signs and stumbled upon a naked person? This is the heart of most arguments against nude beaches.

Palm sighs. He chooses his words slowly.

"We don't want to offend anyone," he says, "That's not our objective."

Nude beach-going, he adds, "is not an adult-oriented, sexual activity, like they're trying to make it. It's a nonthreatening, family form of recreation. For kids, it's natural to be nude. It's not a big deal to them."

He pauses again. Weighing what to say.

"I don't want to sound judgmental, but so many people don't feel comfortable with their own bodies. And they teach that body shame to their children. Well, I have a saying: Repression leads to obsession."

Last month, at the height of the publicity surrounding Tampa Area Naturists' proposal for Fort De Soto, the president of the Tierra Verde Community Association wrote a letter to the editor, making it clear that a nude beach would be unwelcome so near a "family community" like Tierra Verde.

Palm wrote a letter in response. It didn't make the newspaper.

"This comment suggests that naturists don't have families," he wrote, "That we don't have mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. It suggests that we must be some kind of aliens from outer space which were hatched from extraterrestrial eggs or something."

Naturists are human beings, Palm continued. "And we would appreciate being treated as such."

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