Hello everyone! It has been a long time since I have posted anything here, but I have followed Sunnyday's site for years and appreciate it for not only the great stories that she has posted and has written, but for the strong Christian message she has as well.
I am mostly a wanna be nudist, as I have a very reluctant spouse who will not entertain the idea of visiting a nudist venue as she believes it would cause her to lust. She doesn't really enjoy being unclothed either. But I love her despite the differences we have in that and other areas of life.
I want to share a site that contains my favorite collection of stories of any site I have seen:
https://legacy.domai.com/news/
No sexual stories, mostly just tales of appreciation of beauty. Unfortunately, this site is static since 2013, but I am so glad it is still available.
I would like to ask you all to add to it in this thread. Can you recall a time when you were awe-struck by the beauty of nudity freely shared? Share it with us!
Looking forward to reading your story!
Oh 2 Be Nude 24/7

Hi, Group:
Hi, O2BN247:
I guess that everyone has a reason to try nudity, and, further, has a friend or partner who disagrees altogether with that reason. As with other religions, there will be points of contention mixed in with points of agreement regarding a person's reason for believing something.
I can't see that there're any cold, hard fact about nudity, except that there are degrees of nakedness, places where nakedness is permitted, and times where the concept can be introduced without an upset, either by talking or kicking off your shoes.
I have a niece who wears a temple garment even when bathing. Apparently this thing is designed so that a fresh one can be slipped on as the soiled one is removed. That way her god won't see her sinning.
As for my wife and me, we sleep nude, do a nude yoga morning stretch, help each other bathe (backs and feet are hard to reach at our age) and cavort in our home and private back yard, unencumbered.
I would add this: almost any upsetting change can be distressing unless it is introduced gently.
She and I enjoy Sunnyday's site, too, because the group here is a support group as effective as we can find. It is really difficult to try discussing to our neighbors that we are not always dressed in our home. Some accept it, but one insists that we should be more careful.
Do post here again, and make it more of a conversation.

Yes, my husband and I definitely remember times we were very impressed, maybe even awestruck, by what we call the "adorable awkwardness" of young people in love experiencing social nudity for their first time. It's sweet and exciting, and yes, let's not try to deny it, quite sensual, to enjoy seeing a demure young woman who is not used to nudity shyly undressing with her boyfriend as he also undresses, and both of them experience the excitement of having their emotions take over, and overwhelm their embarrassment, and move from saying "I don't think I can ever be nude in public" to "I can't believe I'm really doing this," to "This is so exciting, why didn't we try this long ago?"

We don't just mean other people. Our nudist experience began on a beach near our campus so we were there with friends, and while my boyfriend (now husband) had been going there for a while, for me, it was not only my first time ever being nude in a group, until that morning I'd never even been nude with my own boyfriend, or any previous boyfriend. (We knew our first time nude needed to be in private so we showered together before going down to the beach.) Some of our friends back then still tell us even years later how cute we looked working through our shyness undressing on the beach and then being nude together. Mostly my shyness, of course, but for my boyfriend too, since being nude with someone we love is different from being nude with others. Our friends tell us it was deliciously fun to watch us look over each other's bodies, and to walk down to the water for our first nude swim together, and walk out of the water completely nude back to our beach blankets, and learn to enjoy holding hands together while walking through groups of other beachgoers who, we were quite sure, were all staring at the obvious newbie couple. Nervous newbies do attract attention, but we now understand that most people who are nude beach regulars aren't interested in seeing nude people because they're used to nudity, though they may compliment young people on their decision to try social nudity who are obviously new and nervous.

That brings me to some concerns about the Domai site.

I'm not sure what I think. It seems too close to soft core for me. Also, while the site hasn't been updated since 2013, the author, Eolake Stobblehouse, died last year, so unless someone is paying the bill to keep it online, it might go away soon. Link here on his death: https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2022/04/goodbye-eolake.html

My husband and several male friends pointed out that most Domai pictures aren't much different from those on the Naturist Christians site. One male friend reminded me that when he and his girlfriend were first considering social nudity and were talking with me in a coffee shop and his girlfriend was asking us hard questions about how friends could shower together nude, I pulled up this photo from the Naturist Christians site on my phone and showed it to her: https://naturist-christians.org/images/public/012.jpg

He reminded me his girlfriend had been intrigued by seeing two young couples showering together without the men physically responding. (A close look shows both men are calm while enjoying a shower with two women, proving mixed-gender showers don't have to be sexual.) Seeing real life non-sexual nudity in that photo, plus our talk about how sensually enjoyable it is for women to swim nude with water gliding over our bodies, convinced her to try a visit to the lakefront cottage with us. Instead of being afraid of showering in a group before using the pool, like many women are, she was actually excited by the idea, eventually did come with us, and once she got through her fear of undressing, the shower helped break down her inhibitions and false modesty.

Experienced nudists won't be interested in the photos that make up such a big part of the Domai site. Most young people today are used to seeing nude photos so it won't bother them and might help. Eolake Stobblehouse was a photographer so his interest in photos is understandable, but many of our friends who can't understand why we enjoy social nudity were raised to avoid seeing nudity. One reason we like Sunny's site is we can send people here and they won't immediately reject the site and click away because they're afraid of seeing attractive nude photos.

BeachBunny wrote:
"That brings me to some concerns about the Domai site.

"I'm not sure what I think. It seems too close to soft core for me. Also, while the site hasn't been updated since 2013, the author, Eolake Stobblehouse, died last year, so unless someone is paying the bill to keep it online, it might go away soon. Link here on his death: https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2022/04/goodbye-eolake.html"

First, BB, thank you for the link to Eolake's obituary - I wasn't aware he had died. I'm not surprised.

About 20 years ago, I subscribed to Domai - it seemed to me (in those days; I've changed now) that Domai featured excellent photography of attractive young women in beautiful poses that (in my view) were far from pornographic. Photography then was not digital, so the photographers had to work hard (technically and artistically) to make good pictures. Eventually, as his health declined, Eolake decided to sell Domai; it went downhill. I did not renew my subscription.

I exchanged messages with Eolake, who was interested in many things - cameras, early versions of e-readers, spiritual matters - but Domai was his main interest until he couldn't keep up with his own high standards.

How have I changed? I still appreciate beauty, but I'm more interested in the people themselves than the two-dimensional images portrayed.

Same here. I'm still a "fan" of good nudist/nude photography; so much so that I have tried my hand at taking some of my own with my wife.

But it's very different from "real life" social nudist interaction. Sitting across someone naked and actively interacting with them is not as "artificial" as someone carefully posing in a "strategically esthetic" way. And then of course there's the fact that you're interacting with someone sharing their thoughts, idiosyncrasies and physicality with you; that you can't get from looking at an inert "moment in time", with no context as to what that person's thoughts and feelings might be about their nudity or the setting they're in.
Seeing nudity without the personal interaction is not as meaningful.

I came across DOMAI ages ago. In fact I read somewhere that the title stood for "Dirty Old Men's, and I forget what AI stood for. I found it borderline soft porn. All of the girls were young, most likely just past 18. As someone who likes photography, including artistic nude photography, it was a turnoff. The point of artistic nude photography is to celebrate the beauty of the nude figure in it's natural state. At least in my opinion. No touch-ups to block stretch marks, scars or skin diseases like psoriasis. Below are links that I find that celebrate the natural nude.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CG7xsTNpjkb/

https://pbase.com/dds/nudes_flora_1&page=all

https://pbase.com/david_dong/nude_on_the_rock

Natural Guy