No shirt, no pants, no problem

Just as swallows return to Capistrano to herald spring's arrival in California, Brattleboro has its nudists to alert New Englanders that warm weather is back -- at least warm enough to tolerate without obvious shivering of key body parts.

	Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image.

The small town in Vermont has no prohibition on public nudity, so free-spirited people there wander around unashamed of the types of things that so many of us are ashamed about. So long as you don't do anything lewd, you can do the full monty walking down the lovely tree-lined streets of Brattleboro (proposed motto: "Visit Brattleboro -- we leave nothing to the imagination!"), and some residents there recently resumed doing so. Even after a group gained attention last year for frequent unclothed gatherings in a local parking lot, a proposed ordinance to ban public nudity was defeated.

"We have a group of people who want to come enjoy the legal activity," police Capt. Steven Rowell said recently, presumably in uniform as he spoke to a reporter for the Brattleboro Reformer. For record-keeping purposes, however, the town manager has begun keeping a log of public complaints reported about the nudity.

No one gets carded

Most good Americans, of course, don't walk nekkid right down Main Street USA. If they want to be au naturel outside the home, they go to one of them camps in the woods where people frolic unclothed, and other people who would never do that wonder if they're all ogling and groping each other, but the people who do it say no-no-no, you don't understand, you close-minded, clothes-minded squares, get your mind out of the gutter.

Nudist groups have a problem a little bit like the Kiwanis and Lions and such organizations, however. They're all getting older, and there aren't enough people coming up from behind to replenish their stocks.

The Associated Press reported this month on a nudist camp in northeastern Connecticut that invited students from dozens of New England schools to a college day in hopes of piquing their interest. The median age at the place, called the Solair Recreation League, is 55 (yep, even older than the median age of Allegheny County). More than 90 percent of the 50,000 members of the American Association for Nude Recreation are estimated to be older than 35.

"I think people think that we're all hippies," said a 22-year-old woman who is a longtime visitor with her family. "Other people, I don't know the right way to say this, but they think it's more sexual, kind of. They don't understand just the being free with your body and being comfortable."

Casual Friday every day

The Morning File, of course, is a clothing-optional column. You want to wear a parka while you're reading, fine. You feel like reading in the buff on a sunny morning, be our guest. If you're in the latter category, it could just be that it's the start of your natural workday.

From the AP
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In a survey related to the growing trend of people telecommuting from home, 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women revealed that they wear nothing at all while they work, the company SonicWALL Inc. reported last year. The survey didn't clarify what kind of work these folks are doing from home. We're trusting no sharp cutlery is involved.

No gymnophobes allowed

If you have think you have gymnophobia, raise your hand. If your arm is lifted because you're remembering your fear of being killed in a game of dodgeball in gym class years ago, you can put it down. It's got nothing to do with that. Gymnophobia is the fear of being seen naked.

As you may have read, there were very few gymnophobes in Mexico City two weeks ago. Some 18,000 Mexicans gathered -- barely -- in the city's main plaza for photos taken by American Spencer Tunick, who frequently organizes massive scenes of nudity as artwork. Like the nudist associations, he insists there's nothing sexual about it.

This will teach him

And then there's the case in Florida of part-time high school music teacher Jacob Brenner, a thespian (and you know what they're like) who didn't mind baring all in a local stage production of the Broadway show, "The Full Monty." Because of lighting effects at the climactic moment of a striptease by the characters on stage, no one in the Venice Little Theatre's audience even saw the actual nudity. It didn't matter to Charlotte County Public School District officials -- they announced plans in March to can Brenner.

They put the dismissal on hold, however, while seeking legal advice. Mr. Brenner's attorney was perturbed that no school officials involved in the decision even bothered to see "The Full Monty," which was originally a British film about unemployed workers trying an unusual way to make cash. Mr. Brenner couldn't understand all the fuss and said he never tried to conceal his role in the musical.

His attorney said of school officials: "They are in a difficult process of deciding whether artistic freedom is more important than a flash of the [bottom]." Ah, they're nothing but a bunch of gymnophobes, if you ask me.