My time as a nudist has led me to explore more than just the stunning nude beaches and nudist resorts of the world…

It has further inspired me to embark on a more purposeful journey of raising awareness about, and encouraging, body positivity. As a thirty year old, I have witnessed the rapid rise of social media and, with that, the pressures that a ‘filtered age’ have placed upon body image. An age where the beauty industry sells us our definition of ‘beautiful’ through the narrowed and distorted lens of the media, and where consumerism prevails and profit is the goal; it is a breeding ground for mass consumerism, greed, materialism, narcissism, divide and loathing.

For you and I, naked yoga probably doesn’t sound all too daunting…well, not the naked part anyway!

Inspiringly, there is a wave of women taking the bold and courageous leap to shed the layers and get nude in downward dog! And! Hats off to them…they’re not even nudists! Just your everyday mother, sister, daughter, teacher, nurse, business owner…you name it! Your average textile beach-goer and, more often than not, someone that has never been nude in front of strangers before. So, leading a revolutionary movement to bare it all in the name of normalising nudity, body-positivity and self-acceptance, these women are leading the charge to improve their body image by trying their hand at some naked yoga. By doing so, they’re also helping to slowly change the stigma attached to nudity and a nudist lifestyle.

I believe that glorifying a certain body-type over another breeds insecurity in those not yet confident enough in themselves, making them possibly feel inadequate and undesirable. Doing so also places pressure on people to live up to a certain ‘ideal’, ‘standard’ or image, and so we have a culture which thrives on divide and competition.

I think one of the most obvious perpetrators is the media. With the evolution of television and cinematography, marketing and advertising came into its own. Companies, especially in the beauty industry, seized an opportunity to make money (and BIG money) by attempting to sell the masses an image of what is considered ‘desirable’, constantly making people (more so females) feel inadequate about their physical appearance, persuading them to believe that they would be considered more ‘beautiful’ if they brought this or that.

When it comes to body-shaming, there seems to be this double standard that pervades society and is, sadly, tolerated and even exacerbated. Why have we developed such a complex around the word ‘fat’? Why do we find ourselves whispering that word but not so much the ‘skinny’ word? Quite frankly, these blatant double standards I have been subject to have given me a bit of, what I call, a ‘skinny girl complex’.