Naturism in New Zealand
[2] This Congress was marked by political unrest, as sitting INF president Sieglinde Ivo was voted out in favour of French delegate Armand Jamier by a narrow majority.
According to reports by Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks upon their visit to New Zealand in 1769–70, Māori men frequently went casually naked except for a belt with a piece of string attached holding their foreskin shut over their glans penis, the only part that they showed any reluctance to uncover in social settings,[10][11] whereas Māori women covered their entire pubic area with small aprons or bunches of fragrant plant material, and reacted with shame when caught uncovered in the presence of men.
The nakedness of Māori was cited, often in the phrase "naked savages", as a sign of their racial inferiority (which in turn was seen as casting into doubt the validity of the Treaty of Waitangi).
A number of male offenders were arrested and convicted for "willfully and obscenely exposing their persons" at various Wellington and Auckland beaches through the 1930s; a typical fine was £1.
In 1939, a young woman was convicted but granted a suspended sentence for swimming nude at Takapuna in Auckland, after explaining to police that she was an adherent of the "Back to Health" movement.
[20] By the 1980s, following the popularity of the Nambassa festivals (see below), casual outdoor nudity was a sufficiently recognisable feature of the social landscape that the cartoonist Murray Ball (1939–2017) made one of the minor characters of his iconic New Zealand comic strip Footrot Flats, Cousin Kathy, a frequent practitioner.
[23][24] In 2019, a man was convicted of willful damage after chainsawing the phallus off a Māori carving on a walking track at Woodville near Palmerston North; he claimed that the statue "promoted sex for pleasure"[25] and that he had support from God.
[26] When a small group of Taupō residents called for public signage banning G-strings at the local Spa Thermal Park in early 2020, the strength of opposition to their proposal made national news.
[27][28] In February 2016, complaints were laid with the Judicial Conduct Commission over photographs of District Court judge David Saunders playing pétanque in the nude at Pineglades Naturist Club.
[29] Though Saunders' name was not published, the case drew national attention, with negative commentary from former government minister Rodney Hide[30] and the Sensible Sentencing Trust,[31] and support from TV host and self-declared nudist Paul Henry.
"National Nude Day" was a mock public holiday created when TV personality and former rugby player Marc Ellis challenged viewers of the TV2 talk show SportsCafe to streak in front of then Prime Minister Helen Clark.
[53] The music festival Nambassa, held from 1976 to 1981 near Waihi in the Hauraki District, at its 1979 peak attracted an audience of 75,000, of whom an estimated 35% chose to attend partially or completely nude.
[54][55] The event began a tradition of nudity at New Zealand summer festivals which continues today at Convergence,[56] Kiwiburn, Luminate,[57] Rhythm & Vines, Splore, and elsewhere.
Nudity at Rhythm & Vines made international news in 2018 with a viral video capturing an incident in which a male festival-goer groped a topless woman who retaliated by striking him in the face.
One main aim of the parade was to draw attention to the fact that toplessness is legal in New Zealand, so that women have the same right to go bare-chested as men; this aligns both with the general philosophy of naturism and with feminist causes such as Free the Nipple.
The Police Offences Act 1908 prescribed imprisonment with hard labour for anyone who "willfully and obscenely exposes his person in any public place or within the view thereof".
[70] In 1991 an Auckland man was convicted of offensive behaviour in the District Court for sunbathing nude on the beach at Fitzpatrick Bay in the presence of a group of visiting schoolchildren.
