Skinny dipping

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:For the novel by Carl Hiaasen, see Skinny Dip.

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Skinny dipping, also spelled skinny-dipping, is swimming naked, i.e. without any swimsuit. A synonym is skinny diving.

Etymology

The term skinny dip, first recorded in English in the 1950s, includes the somewhat archaic word skinny, known since 1573, meaning "having to do with skin", as it exposed the naked hide; in World War II skinny was also used for the 'naked' truth.

Definitions

The term is commonly used with a neutral tone to describe swimming in unheated water, but is also used when referring to going naked in hot tubs and hot springs.

It has a more mischievous connotation when describing swimming excursions (often under cover of darkness) in swimming pools or at beaches where one would be expected to wear swimsuits. In this sense, skinny dipping in mixed company (i.e. both males and females) has an element of sexual rebelliousness to it, though sexual activity does not necessarily take place.

Variations known from fiction, possibly imitated in real life, include clothed female nude male swimming in which men skinny-dip while women wear swimsuits (however women may swim topfree) and the reverse, clothed male nude female.

History

Skinny dipping was once very common in the western world too, especially for young boys and girls swimming in a secluded pond, swimming hole, or section of a river. Swimsuits were originally uncommon in these settings, as they were made out of materials such as wool that required extra care to deal with, and were of limited practical benefit.

Although modern swimwear is more practical, skinny dipping remains a fairly common activity in rural areas, where an unwanted audience of outsiders is rather unlikely; yet it may be forbidden even there by law and/or parental authority if considered immoral.

Before the YMCA began to admit females in the early 1960s, swimming trunks were not even allowed in the pools, and high school swimming classes for boys sometimes had similar policies, citing the impracticality of providing and maintaining sanitary swimming gear. These practices were common because of the perception that there was nothing wrong or sexual about seeing members of the same gender in the nude, especially in these indoor contexts among equals in 'birthday suit uniform'.

Skinny dipping in modern culture

Verbal media

As literature is not a visual medium, forms of nudity are easily accepted here.

• In classical Dutch language works of the Flemish authors Felix Timmermans and Ernest Claes, both also made into motion pictures which include he explicit scenes, title characters practice it in different ways: the adult Pallieter, who has recovered from a potentially lethal sickness, takes skinny dive in the river is symbolical for shedding his old stuffy city life in favor of hedonistic life in the country; the mischievous schoolboy nicknamed De Witte van Zichem, a farmhand's son, is caught by his mother skinny diving with classmates - at the adult's approach they all hide shy, but she recognizes and takes away his clothes, forcing him to return home covered only by leaves, expecting a good hiding.
• Several other popular books use, essentially, Skinny-dipping as or in the title.
• Most literature on Naturism uses the phrase "skinny-dipping" to set a relaxed tone, as in the YMCA photo
• The R.E.M. song Nightswimming refers to skinny dipping (specifically at night)
• Skinny dipping can refer to swimming offshore from nude beaches

Visual media

Skinny dipping was a common subject of Old Masters and Romantic oil paintings, usually bucolic or in a mythological of historical setting. In later days it became rarer, but more likely to depict straight-forward contemporary scenes

• The English painter Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929) is mainly known for various depictions of boys and young men who swim, dive and lounge, usually naked, on a boat or on the beach, sometimes in a traditional 'alibi' context, but after 1890 often just naturalistic, usually sexually innocent scenes with local youths in the Cornish fishing port of Falmouth where he settled in 1885
• Norman Rockwell's painting No Swimming that adorned the cover of the June 4, 1921 edition of the Saturday Evening Post with boys in various states of undress escaping from the local authorities.

Since a skinny dive is considered more innocent than nudity in an explicitly sexual context, skinny dipping sceens are unlikely to cause a scandal and stand a better change of surviving the censor/ rating authorities' scrutiny.

• Easy Rider (1969) Emphasizes anarchic Hippie style
• The Last Picture Show (1971) set in a Texan village contains an indoor pool tradition including an 'initiation' consisting in divesting in full view
• Hair (1979) Emphasizes anarchic Hippie style
• Walkabout (1971) emphasis on communing with Nature
• in Wilde (life of the witty playwright Oscar) several men jump off an English seaside resort pier in various attire, from full bathing suits to stark naked.
• On Golden Pond (1981) Family skinny dipping intended to demonstrate open-minded nature of parents
• In National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), Christie Brinkley skinny-dipped with Chevy Chase , who was later joined by Beverly D'Angelo.
• In A Room with a View (film) (1986, Academy Award winner) the reverend Beebe remarsk young Freddy Honeychurch is extraodinarily direct when in one sentence prseting himself and extending an ivitation for a swim to his new neighbours' slighly older son George Emerson, but when the two invite him two cherfully accepts- after jolly splashing and frolicking isnide and aroudn the pool in the woods, the are surprised by Freddie's mother, sister and her fiancé
• In Cruel Intentions (1999), main character Sebastian (Ryan Phillippe) arranges to meet Annette (Reese Witherspoon) while he's skinny dipping indoors, and for her to see him drying himself.

After the film industry, even television dared to either show or mention it.

• Many other films use skinny-dipping to suggest trust, emotional intimacy, intimacy with nature, even shades of baptism, but often just for the nudity and as a prelude to sexual activity.
• Skinny-dipping (Au Pairs, The) (2005) ISBN 1416903828 For Grade 9 and up. Culturally, cutting edge.
• in Exit to Eden(1994) Dana Delany and Stephanie Niznik skinny dip on a sexual fantasy island.
• In the teenager TV series One Tree Hill, the character Felix Tagarro actually makes his first appearance by meeting female character Brooke who awakes by the sound of him skinny dipping unannounced in her family's pool.
• In the Butterflies episode of the situation comedy Malcom in the Middle, Wendy (Mandy Musgrave) said , "I've gotta run. Skinny dipping starts at midnight".
• in The Good Fight (Season 4, Episode 13, 2002) of Sex and the City Samantha (Kim Catrall) and Richard (James Remar) skinny dip.
• On one episode of Baywatch Hawaii Jessie Owens (Brooke Burns) goes skinny dipping and performs a rescue in the nude.

Places where skinny dipping takes place

See also List of public outdoor clothes free places

• Columbia River, Washington (half of the Oregon side)
• Russian River, California
• Canfield Marsh, Long Island Sound, Norwalk CT
• Hanlan's Point Beach, Toronto, Canada
• Hippie Hollow Park, Lake Travis, Austin Texas
• Wreck Beach, Vancouver, BC, Canada
• Haulover Beach, Miami, Florida
• Barcelo Maya Beach Resort Swimming Pool, Mexico
• Oceans, seas, rivers and lakes all over the surface of Earth

See also

• Bohemianism and Counterculture

Sources and references

(incomplete)

• [EtymologyOnLine]
• [IMDb- search each motion picture]; for a long list of movies see under the plot key word

 

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