What Nudism Exposes
An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada
Categories: History, Canadian History, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Social Sciences, Sociology, Environmental & Nature Studies, Environmental History, Regional & Cultural Studies
Publisher: UBC Press Show Edition Details
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774867221, 268 pages, October 2022
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780774867238, 268 pages, October 2022
Paperback : 9780774867214, 268 pages, June 2023
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Table of contents
Introduction
Part 1: Nudism Comes to Canada
1 Building a Movement
2 Constructing Community at the Club
3 Regulating Sexuality
4 Navigating Gender Norms
5 Raising Young Nudists
Part 2: Nudism on Display
6 Photographs in Sunbathing for Health Magazine, 1947–59
7 The Pageant Tradition and Miss Nude World
Part 3: Nudism, the Natural Environment, and the Regulation of Space
8 Cultivating Nature and Protecting Privacy at the Club
9 Defending Nature and Public Nudity at Wreck Beach, 1969–79
Conclusion
Notes; Bibliography; Index
Description
What Nudism Exposes offers an original perspective on postwar Canada by situating the nudist movement within the broader social and cultural context and considering how nudist clubs navigated changing times.
As the nudist movement took root in Canada after the Second World War, its members advanced the idea that going nude and looking at the bodies of others satisfied natural curiosity, loosened the hold of social taboos, and encouraged mental health. By the 1970s, nudists increasingly emphasized the pleasurable aspects of their practice. Mary-Ann Shantz contends that throughout the postwar decades, nudists sought social approval as they engaged with contemporary concerns about childrearing, sexuality, public nudity, and the natural environment.
This perceptive, eminently readable book explains the perspectives of the movement while questioning its assumptions. What nudism ultimately exposes is how the body figures at the intersection of nature and culture, the individual and the social, the private and the public.
Reviews
... [a] richly researched and insightful book...
- Bob Hummelt, BC Studies