Naked as a Jaybird and loving it
A true milestone in fine art publishing. Excerpt from the book by Dian Hanson
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Jaybirds considered clothing the straightjacket of uptight society. Pudor preached intoxicating substances should be expelled from the body like undesirables from the country. And Jaybirds... well, they disagreed on some points. But like the original German nudists the American Jaybirds were absolutely creatures of their time, born of unique historical circumstance, nurtured by social upheaval and dreams of a better life for all mankind. The Nacktkulturists had Heinrich Pudor, Richard Ungewitter and Paul Zimmerman to lead them.
The Jaybirds had Stan Sohler, Bob Reitman and "Connie". We really hoped Jaybird would lead to freer acceptance of nudism in general culture," says Connie, the Mensa member, who at eighty still holds the Jaybird vision, but because she now works for a conservative firm chose to use a pseudonym. "Jaybird was meant to sound fun, to give a certain sense of abandon along with the nudity. You have to remember the time; Jaybird couldn't have existed in any other time."
Oh, she's right there. Jaybird magazines, with names like Jaybird Happening and Jaybird Scene, Campus Jaybird, Women's Home Jaybird and Utopia, were the collision of two worlds, the conservative nudist community where families gathered to play volleyball and barbeque in the buff, and the rockin' hippie planet where all was groovy, especially if it kicked sand at the man. And in the 1960s, when Jaybird spread its wings, hippies were kicking sand all up and down the California coast. It was the era of the Free Beach Movement, the largely forgotten fight for nude access to public shores; the time of Sandstone, a swinging psychotherapy commune in the Hollywood Hills where biologist Alex Comfort and psychologists Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen went to tune in, drop out and get laid, in any order desired; and the time when sexual researcher Dr. John Money was prescribing stays at the almost equally libidinous Elysium Fields nudist park up in Topanga for patients suffering excessive shyness; and also the time when author Gay Talese was partaking of all these places and pleasures for his book on America's changing mores, Thy Neighbor's Wife, and losing his own wife in the process.
Yes, it was a time, such a time it could even lead a middle aged, Midwestern mother to run away to California to join the nudists. "
My second husband and I married at the age of 39 and we decided we were going to be nudists," says Connie. "We had reproduced ourselves and our children were grown. My husband was able to find some of these old Modern Sunbathing magazines and we talked about a lot of things we didn't like about how society was run and I told him how I liked to swim nude."
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Jaybirds considered clothing the straightjacket of uptight society. Pudor preached intoxicating substances should be expelled from the body like undesirables from the country. And Jaybirds... well, they disagreed on some points. But like the original German nudists the American Jaybirds were absolutely creatures of their time, born of unique historical circumstance, nurtured by social upheaval and dreams of a better life for all mankind. The Nacktkulturists had Heinrich Pudor, Richard Ungewitter and Paul Zimmerman to lead them.
The Jaybirds had Stan Sohler, Bob Reitman and "Connie". We really hoped Jaybird would lead to freer acceptance of nudism in general culture," says Connie, the Mensa member, who at eighty still holds the Jaybird vision, but because she now works for a conservative firm chose to use a pseudonym. "Jaybird was meant to sound fun, to give a certain sense of abandon along with the nudity. You have to remember the time; Jaybird couldn't have existed in any other time."
Oh, she's right there. Jaybird magazines, with names like Jaybird Happening and Jaybird Scene, Campus Jaybird, Women's Home Jaybird and Utopia, were the collision of two worlds, the conservative nudist community where families gathered to play volleyball and barbeque in the buff, and the rockin' hippie planet where all was groovy, especially if it kicked sand at the man. And in the 1960s, when Jaybird spread its wings, hippies were kicking sand all up and down the California coast. It was the era of the Free Beach Movement, the largely forgotten fight for nude access to public shores; the time of Sandstone, a swinging psychotherapy commune in the Hollywood Hills where biologist Alex Comfort and psychologists Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen went to tune in, drop out and get laid, in any order desired; and the time when sexual researcher Dr. John Money was prescribing stays at the almost equally libidinous Elysium Fields nudist park up in Topanga for patients suffering excessive shyness; and also the time when author Gay Talese was partaking of all these places and pleasures for his book on America's changing mores, Thy Neighbor's Wife, and losing his own wife in the process.
Yes, it was a time, such a time it could even lead a middle aged, Midwestern mother to run away to California to join the nudists. "
My second husband and I married at the age of 39 and we decided we were going to be nudists," says Connie. "We had reproduced ourselves and our children were grown. My husband was able to find some of these old Modern Sunbathing magazines and we talked about a lot of things we didn't like about how society was run and I told him how I liked to swim nude."
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Naked as a Jaybird
Hardcover, 20.5 x 25 cm (8.1 x 9.8 in.), 264 pages
$ 39.99
$ 39.99
Technicolor testaments to a bygone era of free love and pubic pride
