Naturist resort

Some naturist resorts and communities require nudity as a condition of remaining on the site; others are clothing-optional, allowing people to wear clothing so long as they tolerate others going nude.

Examples include Vera Playa in Spain, and Centre Hélio-Marin Montalivet and the Naturist Village in Cap d'Agde, both in France.

The earliest known naturist club, the Fellowship of the Naked Trust, was founded in Matheran in British India in 1891 by a District and Sessions judge named Charles Crawford.

A proposal to add a female branch to the organization was never realized, and it went out of existence when Crawford was transferred to Ratnagiri shortly thereafter.

Correspondence between Crawford and early gay rights activist Edward Carpenter suggests the latter knew of similar groups in Vienna and Munich at the time, but no other evidence of their existence has surfaced.

[1][2] The term Nacktkultur ("naked culture") was coined in 1903 by Heinrich Pudor for Germany's growing naturist movement,[3] which connected nudity with vegetarianism, social reform, and various ideas about health and fitness.

[3] Marcel Kienné de Mongeot is credited with introducing naturism to France in 1920, seeing it as a potential cure for tuberculosis (which had affected his family).

A court case initiated by him established that nudism was legal on private property that was screened from public view.

In 1931, Drs André and Gaston Durville established the first naturist village, Héliopolis, on the Île du Levant.

[15] More commercial resorts followed in France, notably the Oltra Club in Cap d'Agde, a camping and caravanning site which in the 1970s became the nucleus of the new Naturist Village.

[21] It is speculated that younger naturists no longer feel they need to join a club or visit a resort in order to practise naturism.

Naturist villages generally accommodate businesses providing other amenities, which may include supermarkets, cafés, restaurants, and nightclubs.

[36] Historically, most naturist clubs and resorts refused entry to men who were not accompanied by women, and these restrictions still remain in many places.

The subgenre petered out in the mid-1960s due to a combination of falling audience numbers and law changes which rendered the documentary pretext unnecessary.