Public Nudity on the Big Screen

Regular readers of this blog and my fiction will note that I tend to stick to a few particular themes, and probably the dominant one of these is public nudity (especially where my female characters are involved). Whether they are naked in public accidentally or on purpose, whether they are embarrassed by it or love it, it happens a lot in my stories and (suffice to say) if you aren’t a fan of this trope, you’re probably not going to like my work.

I’m certainly not the only person to make use of these sort of scenes in fiction though. There’s a lot of erotica out there which has characters indulging their exhibitionist sides, some of which I have written about before.

Away from erotica, though, the trope also turns up in more mainstream works, and is perhaps most memorable when it is used in films, as the strong visual image of a person (usually an attractive actress) naked in a public place where nudity would not be expected can be very striking. In this blog I’ll talk about a few scenes of public nudity in films that I’m familiar with, a lot of which have been an influence on my own work.

(There are links to these scenes in my posts below, please be aware some of them link to adult sites as it was not possible to find the correct clips on Youtube).

Splash (1984) 

For me, my first encounter with the “beautiful woman nude in public” trope in film was the movie Splash, a romantic fantasy comedy starring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah. In the film Hannah plays a mermaid who saves a young boy from drowning during her own childhood, and forms a permanent connection with him. When he has another accident at sea as an adult, she saves him again and, recovering his wallet, realises she can find him and make good on their connection. In this particular film, if a mermaid leaves the water, her tail transforms into legs, so this means Hannah is able to come out of the ocean and walk on dry land as a human woman; which she does, coming ashore to New York in spectacular and memorable fashion. Because she’s spent her whole life living in the ocean as a mermaid, Hannah’s character has no concept of clothes or modesty, and her transformation between mermaid and human doesn’t magic up clothes from anywhere, so she simply gets out of the water and begins her search for Hanks’ character at the Statue of Liberty, walking around completely naked in front of dozens of tourists and other onlookers. As she’s also a mute who is unable to explain herself, she winds up arrested (for “indecent exposure”) and it’s this that leads her to finally meet up with Hanks’ character when the cops discover she has his wallet in her possession and hope he might be able to help identify her and explain why she was walking around Liberty Island in the altogether.

The film doesn’t rely on just clever photography and the reactions of the extras to convey Hannah’s nakedness either; although her breasts are covered by her long blonde hair in true “Lady Godiva” style, we see her (or her body double?) from the back as she climbs over a railing approaching the statue, and she is definitely 100% naked in that shot!

It’s particularly memorable because of Hannah’s clever portrayal of complete innocence; her character has no idea there is anything inappropriate about walking around in public with nothing on,. I think “characters with no nudity taboo” are something I’ve had a liking for ever since seeing this film and while I've not explored that particular archetype in my fiction yet, I'd love to someday.

Watch the scene here.

Roxanne (1987)

Poor Daryl Hannah!  Not only was she walking around naked in public in Splash, a few years later she had her clothes off outside again in this modern-day retelling of the play Cyrano de Bergerac, co-starring her with Steve Martin and his giant nose.

But while in Splash Hannah’s character was innocent in her lack of modesty, here Hannah’s Roxanne is embarrassingly locked out of her house naked when her robe gets irretrievably caught in the closing door. She’s forced to venture out to neighbours' in search of clothing and assistance, doing her best to cover and conceal herself, arriving at the house of Martin’s character C.D. (the local fire chief). It’s their first meeting and sets up the romantic relationship they will eventually have in a typically cute and funny way.

This is probably a more realistic depiction of a character finding themselves naked in public than the fantasy of Splash – Roxanne is a normal woman and she just finds the experience embarrassing and frustrating, and does her best to make sure that she doesn’t lose all her dignity along with her clothes by sneaking around, covering herself with her hands and hiding from view when Martin’s character answers his door, all the while impatient to get herself back into her house. But it’s pretty much the classic “locked outside naked” scene for me.

Watch the scene here.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

It’s safe to say the majority of scenes of public nudity that I remember seeing have come from comedies; after all, naked people are funny. While we find nudity sexy, when it’s removed from a sexy situation it often just seems absurd and comedic; never more so than in this spoof of movies like American Pie and She’s All That.

In NATM, a recurring character is Areola, the Foreign Exchange Student, played by Cerina Vincent, who is a spoof of the character Nadia from American Pie. In American Pie, Nadia was a sex object fantasy character for the main male leads, with her nonspecific ‘European-ness’ suggesting she was much more liberated in terms of sex and nudity than her American counterparts. In NATM, the film exaggerates this foreign liberated sex fantasy character to an extreme degree; Areola is completely naked in every scene of the film, walking around the corridors of the generic movie high school in nothing but shoes and a backpack.

While this is titillating to the viewer, it’s also obviously played for laughs. Nobody finds anything much amiss in the fact that Aereola is completely nude; presumably because she is the sexy foreign student stereotype in a school full of deliberate stereotypes, so of course she’s going to be naked. She seems fully self-aware of what she represents, identifying herself (in an accent which is constantly changing) as “lust object for nerd boys who cannot get American pussy” – she gets subtitles even though she is speaking English and these subtitles conveniently leave gaps between the words so they don’t cover her nipples!

It’s all very silly but the actress (Cerina Vincent, who had never done a nude scene before and found portraying a constantly naked character to be a challenge, although she ultimately enjoyed the experience) is very beautiful and the joke works.

Of course, take away the humorous context from these scenes and you have basically every ‘nude in school’ story! I also enjoy the notion of a scenario in which a character’s nakedness (which would in real life likely prompt a lot of shocked reactions) is treated by other characters as perfectly ordinary and normal.

I tried to pay ‘tribute’ to Aereola with the character of Anna in my story Nikki’s Naked Weekend – Nikki’s vaguely Eastern European neighbour (I made her Russian in the final version but I’m told she isn’t realistic a depiction of a Russian girl at all – sorry Russian readers!) who has few qualms about stripping off when hanging out with Nikki during the titular weekend.

Watch the scene here.

The Names of Love (2010)

I’ve left this satirical French sex comedy until last purely because it contains I think probably a personal favourite scene of female public nudity for me.

It’s not a well-known film and much of the humour is apparently derived from the way it plays with the mores of French political alignments and activism in a way that might not really seem as funny to someone not well-versed in these (i.e. me). Sara Forestier plays Baya, a young far-left wing activist who believes she has the perfect weapon to convert right-wingers and conservatives to her point of view; she sleeps with them and once they have enjoyed a left-wing woman sexually, they usually find themselves agreeing with her politics too.

As this is a French sex comedy we see an awful lot of Baya but amusingly this isn’t always intentional on her part (although she does have the hippyish quasi-nudist habits a lot of films give to young European lefty characters as a shorthand for their liberated, anti-bourgeois beliefs). Baya is depicted as adorably clumsy and lacking in self-awareness, her top occasionally falling open or falling down to reveal her bare breasts at inopportune moments.

This is taken to extremes in one scene in which Baya is in the middle of towelling off after a shower when she receives an urgent phone call reminding her she needs to buy someone a birthday present. Distracted and in a hurry to get on her way, she grabs her bag spectacles and slips on her shoes and leaves her apartment, bound for the Paris Metro – apparently utterly unaware that she is stark naked. She remains sufficiently distracted by her phone conversation to make it to the Metro and on to the train, before the disapproving reaction of a Muslim couple sitting opposite her finally clue her in to the fact that she’s forgotten to get dressed; she is of course then enormously embarrassed.

(Fortunately her romantic interest - amusingly already waiting for her to return to the supermarket where she had left him buying groceries for them to have a meal together - spots her walking naked through the street to the Metro station and catches up with her as she disembarks the train, loaning her his suit jacket to cover up with and end the adventure).

I legitimately love this scene because it’s so improbable. The idea that a real woman would be so scatterbrained (Baya herself exclaims "I'm so muddle-headed!") that she would actually walk out of her apartment, into the street and even wait for and board a train, all without realising she had no clothes on, is absurd; even if you were so used to nudity that you could forget to cover up before stepping outside your front door, surely the sensation of things like a breeze on rather more of your skin than you usually would alert you before you got much further? But Baya (who is very lovely) strides confidently down the street in her birthday suit completely oblivious – she even initially mistakes the reaction of the Muslim couple to the sort of disapproval she (as a liberal) expects to receive from more conservative religious types, and it’s only after a few seconds that she glances down and realises, yep, I’m naked. At which point her facial expression is perfect.

I liked this scene so much I borrowed a still from it to show my cover artist what I wanted to have on the cover of Brave Nude World:

Watch the scene here.

There are probably many more scenes from films I have forgotten, so perhaps I'll revisit this topic in another post. Feel free to recommend any of your own favourites too.

New Story! NIP - Nina In Public

After a long break (I was working on my next novel, and then I was laid low with seasonal allergies that left me with little energy for writing), I've returned to where I started, and posted a new short story on Literotica.com, where anyone can read it for free.

This time I've actually done so to enter a contest the site is running in honour of National Nude Day, which is apparently a real thing and takes place on July 14th.  The contest requires authors to submit a story which is themed around nudity - suffice to say I had no difficulty there!

My latest story is called NIP - Nina In Public.  The title is a little pun - NIP usually stands for Naked/Nude In Public, which is certainly the premise of the story; but I called the main character Nina, so that works too. 

Nina is a camgirl/self-employed erotic model and she finds herself going off to fulfill the video request of a particular client with a fetish for public nudity; needless to say, things don't go according to plan, and when she has her bag with her clothes in stolen, Nina's left with no choice but to go out in public naked, no matter how embarrassing it gets.

You can read the story here.

Here's a few additional bits of information about the story, if you're interested (you may want to wait until after reading it in case these count as spoilers):

• Nina isn't based on anyone in particular but her perspective on sex work and the way she got into it are inspired by an old friend of mine who is an online sex worker and has been for several years now.  Girls who make porn are people and sex work is real work, I have nothing but respect and support for women who do that work through their own choice.  Be nice to camgirls, don't steal their vids or abuse them.  And don't look down on your friend who does it.
  
• This is the first time I have written a classic ENF (Embarrassed Nude Female) / forced public nudity story (the typical 'person gets naked outdoors, loses or is cut off from their clothes and ends up having to go naked in public view' tale).  I haven't done one of these before because it's hard to come up with interesting and original ways to have a person be naked and lose track of their clothes outdoors.  The all-time classic is the person whose clothes are stolen while skinnydipping, or the "locked out naked" scenario.  I have read some very good stories where the central character experiments with a little impromptu nudism or nude sunbathing and their clothes are taken then.  Or, a couple who get amorous and their clothes are taken while they're making love.  And that's about it.  So, Nina doing a sort of "dare" (for money) and filming it is a slightly different take on the scenario, which I haven't read elsewhere before.
  
• Often in these stories, exposure/humiliation seems to be a sort of karmic punishment for the woman as a result of them transgressing sexually (exploring nudity or sexuality).  I was trying to avoid that here, so of course Nina ends up having quite a good time and getting hella laid despite her initial embarrassment.  I wanted good things to happen to her, not bad.
  
• Originally the story was going to be a tale with a twist, I abandoned that as I couldn't make it work.  I figured in the end a more light-hearted story was better so I introduced Ryan and had him and Nina getting it on (because it is porn, at the end of the day!).  See if you can guess what the twist was going to be though!
  
• Although I don't say, the story takes place in July.  That's why Ryan is home, he's actually finished college for the summer, but Nina forgets this.
  
• Nobody has two computer chairs in their bedroom but I wanted the two of them sitting next to each other so that's what we ended up with.
  
• I've no plans for further stories with these characters, sorry!  Like most of my short stories this is a one-off.

FWA - Fun With Acronyms

I write a lot of fiction centred around female nudity, especially public nudity, nudism, and exhibitionism.  I'm certainly not the first to do that, and before I was a writer I was a reader. 

From the time when I first began reading this type of fiction (in the form of 'streaking' stories), and later also seeking out pictures and videos with the same themes, I have gotten to learn that there are a lot of acronyms used to describe what the scenario you are reading about or watching contains.  While they might be impenetrable to people who don't know this particular field/kink, they are very useful to those that do.

I recently contributed to a discussion on the Literotica forum about such acronyms and I thought I would expand here on some of the examples I gave and what, to me, I expect to find when reading a story with those tags.

CFNM (Clothed Female/Nude Male)
Probably the most fetish-y of the tags, this usually denotes a scenario in which a man is nude in front of a woman, and he is a submissive while she dominates and/or humiliates him.  She might mock his nudity or penis size, force him to perform the duties of a slave, exhibit him for other women, force him to masturbate in front of her or others, or masturbate him herself (usually not in a loving way!).  Of course, like all good BDSM the man is a willing participant in this, usually (as is the case with most non-consensual stories) being initially persuaded against his will before discovering that he likes it.

Less commonly, it can also mean a male exhibitionist exposing himself to a woman in a less power-dynamic based way (for example, a man agrees to model nude for a female artist friend, and through this sexy times ensue).

CMNF (Clothed Male/Nude Female)
This can also be BDSM-based; a female slave/pet who is naked for her clothed master is not uncommon.  Most people who write these type of scenarios have read at least one John Norman Gor book!  Usually an element of humiliation is involved but sometimes the nude/clothed balance is used just to denote who is subservient to who; lack of clothing 'lessens' the parts of the submissive's identity that are independent of the master.

However CMNF can also be more broadly applied, to scenarios where a woman is naked in the company of a clothed man for mutual pleasure or her own pleasure.  Stories where a man has a female partner who is an exhibitionist fit this category.

CMNM (Clothed Male/Nude Male)
Basically the gay version of CFNM.  Submissive male is naked as part of being dominated by one or more other men.  Usually the clothed male is dressed in a way that denotes extra power (suits and uniforms are common).

Less common, this can form the basis of gay first time/experimentation stories, although usually these quickly become NMNM!

CFNF (Clothed Female/Nude Female)
Can be lesbian dom/sub scenarios, even in a broad sense (strict college professor forces female student to strip for punishment, for example), but not exclusively.  Sometimes in CFNF scenarios the "dominant" character is the one naked, with their nudity denoting sexual confidence rather than submission/humiliation.

Best Friends With a Naked Girl is a CFNF story in which, for the most part, the nude female (Becky) calls the shots, and the clothed female (Lisa) allows Becky to assert her wants onto her.  Becky is constantly portrayed as the more confident of the two, and the one more in touch with her own sexuality.

ENF (Embarrassed Nude Female)
The classic 'caught naked' scenario.  Character finds themselves naked in front of other people when they don't want to be, and end up red-faced by being exposed.  Of these categories this is the one most used in mainstream fiction/cinema (think Daryl Hannah locked out of her house naked at the start of the movie Roxanne, or the "character X walks on on character Y in the shower" trope in many sitcoms).  In erotica, the character usually ends up aroused/excited by the experience (again, as is common in scenarios which begin in non-consensual experiences).

While ENF could begin with a character losing their clothes and instantly plunged from comfort to humiliation, another popular scenario is for a character to begin with consensual nudity (e.g. skinnydipping or nudism) which later progresses to them being seen naked in a way they did not want to be.

CNF (Confident Nude Female)
A less common term, but basically the opposite of ENF.  Here, the woman is naked in front of others because she wants to be, and she knows exactly what she is doing.  Often the excitement in the story comes from the juxtaposition between her confidence in her body and sexuality, and the reactions it causes in others.  Usually, these are stories about female exhibitionists, although "this is me in my natural state, deal with it" nudist characters are also common.

My favourite type of character to write.  Becky in Best Friends is your textbook CNF - she has no embarrassment about being seen naked, even if it causes embarrassment in others.

Can show up in mainstream stories; think Alexis Dziena walking around naked in front of a surprised Bill Murray in Broken Flowers. 

OON (Only One Naked)
A progression from CxNx stories where the character is naked around and in front of a whole bunch of people.  Their nudity is more greatly emphasised because they are outnumbered by people who aren't naked.  Can be humiliating (being seen naked by many people is worse than being seen naked by one) or exciting for them (if being seen naked by one person feels good, then the more the merrier!).

Nude in School/College type stories like DH Jonathan's The 'Volunteer' use the OON scenario (nobody else is walking around naked except Dani, and she is frequently in the company of a great many clothed people); in this instance, being the only naked person "others" the character and marks them as different as usually in these situations nudity is not socially acceptable.

Stories of nude life-modelling for art classes are also in this realm.

NIP (Nude In Public)
Fairly self explanatory.  Character is naked in a public place where nudity would not be the norm.  I tend to restrict this tag to stories where characters are nude in places where it is almost certain that other members of the public will see them (for example, the street, a college campus, a shopping mall, a subway station, a movie theatre, a public park...) - a hike nude in quiet woodland might technically be public, but the expectation of the reader of an NIP story is usually for greater exposure than this.

Character who is nude might be an ENF or a CNF, or start as one and end up as the other!

F2S (Forced to Streak)
I don't see this much any more, although it used to be more common as there was a web forum dedicated to such stories.  In them, a character is naked, usually in an innocent way (skinnydipping or being accidentally locked out of a house naked are common) and then discovers their clothing is missing, or destroyed.  They are therefore left with no choice but to run naked from a place in which their nudity is concealed, through a more public setting, until they reach safety (either home or their car, or some means of clothing themselves).

Of course, as with the other stories in which the character is naked against their will, they might well find as the story progresses that they actually find the risk and/or humiliation exciting.

F2S could also be confused/interpreted as Forced to Strip, which I suppose might be one reason it isn't used much (although such stories, in which a character is undressed, or made to undress, against their will, tend to be tagged as Forced Stripping in my experience).

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I'm sure these aren't the only acronyms in our world of erotica, and I'd love to hear new ones I've not encountered before, or your take on what you expect when you see those above.

Brave Nude World: A Preview

My next novel, Brave Nude World, is coming soon.

In the novel, public nudity is no longer a crime in the United States, and a new generation of nudists has begun to become visible in towns and cities around the country.  In this brave nude world we meet Rachel, a 24-year-old designer living in the big city.  Rachel has never considered nudism before but in a world where much more freedom is possible, she finds herself gradually and inexplicably drawn to the world of the nudists, and all the possibilities and problems it brings her.

Below is an extract from this forthcoming work.

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Summer, or at least the season’s earliest form, arrived in the city, and I began to take my lunch in the park.  I do the same every year – it’s pretty common for us office types to take an hour or so and catch some rays there, so it’s always fairly busy.  Some days I even wear a bikini under my work clothes, so I can work on my tan over lunch.  I’m not especially vain but I’m blonde and I think my skin looks better when I’ve caught a little sun.

Of course, this was the year of the nudie, and so for the first time I noticed that the sunbathing people in the park included some who had taken off all their clothes, and decided to sunbathe naked. It was probably only a half-dozen people – at the most, ten, although I didn’t sit and count them.  Some were in pairs or in a group together, some were solo.  Just laying or sitting on the grass, chilling out, minding their own business – men and women.  But all of them nude.

It was the most naked people I had seen in one place, but for some reason it was also the least surprising.  It made sense that if you were going to go nude in public, you would do it on a fine sunny day, in the middle of a green space like the park, to work on your tan.  The girls in the subway station or guys like Chris and Martin didn’t really make sense to me, but the people tanning in the park somehow did.

That’s probably one reason why, after not many more visits, I decided to join them.
I’d been to the park a few lunchtimes that week, and had been doing my usual trick of going to work in a sundress and bikini, and whipping the dress off for half an hour to tan, read and eat lunch before getting back to the office.  But that day, call it fate if you like, I’d accidentally dressed hurriedly, and had worn regular underwear rather than a bathing suit beneath my dress. No big deal though, I thought when I realised my mistake, I didn’t need to sunbathe every day.

But lunchtime came around, and as I headed to the park I noticed how it was particularly hot and sunny today, and it began to seem like a real shame that I wasn’t going to feel the sun on as much of my skin.  Then I reached a suitable spot, and my eyes spied nearby two blonde women, about my age or maybe a couple of years older, who as I watched removed all their clothing and lay down, naked, on the grass to tan.

I wondered to myself.  Dare I do it?

I knew the law was on my side. But here, in the park, it also seemed like culture was on my side.  While the vast majority of people visiting the park were clothed or (like I had planned to be) wearing swimwear, the two women weren’t the only nudies visible.  It felt, to me, like a place where to be naked would be considered not just legal, but within the limits of what was socially acceptable.  I decided, with a little smile to myself, to give it a try.

I’m not a prude about my body.  Get me in the bedroom with a good looking guy and I will fling myself around in sexy underwear or nude with complete abandon.  I’m never self-conscious in the women’s locker room and, hey, I live alone so sometimes I walk around naked in my apartment.  Who doesn’t do that?  But those were all one thing – taking my clothes off in a completely public place in the middle of the city is another thing entirely for me, and I felt flutters of nerves at my decision.

Not so much, though, to put me off doing it.  I decided to move nearer to where the other two nude women were – safety in numbers and all that.  I didn’t want to get too close, though, in case they thought I was coming on to them or something.

Satisfied that I was in a suitable spot – nearer to the nude women, farther from everyone else – I took a deep breath and pulled my dress off over my head.  I paused for a moment, looking round.  Then I reached behind my back, unhooked my bra and wiggled out of it.  Finally, I slipped my panties off and laid my clothes down on the grass.  I rolled over onto my stomach, using my dress as a blanket between the grass and my skin.

I looked around me, cautiously.  Absolutely nothing had changed.  No people were coming to attack me, or arrest me, or perv over me.  Nobody was really even looking in my specific direction.  They were all just busy engaging with their own lives, absorbed in their own worlds.

I was completely naked, in a park in the middle of the city, in sight of who knows how many people – and everything was fine.

I lay down and enjoyed basking in the sun for a while, feeling the warmth on my bare butt, before rolling over again on to my back.  I put my arms up behind my head.  I was totally exposed now.  I looked down the length of my body – the peaks of my breasts, nipples pointed at the sky.  My ribs, the flat curve of my stomach, dented with the well of my belly button, then leading down, a tiny, barely-visible trail of silky hairs connecting with the fine, patch of curly light brown hair on my mound.  I don’t shave my pubic hair but it grows fine and neat so it looks as though I spend a lot more time on personal grooming than I actually do.

The notion that I was nude in public was somewhat exhilarating.  I thought back to my only real previous experiences with nude sunbathing; specifically the first time I tried it – as a teenager, in the back yard of my parents’ house while everyone was out.  Then, I jumped and reached for my bikini at every noise, imagining mom, dad, my brother, the whole high school football team and the marching band about to come streaming through the gate and catch me tanning in my birthday suit to try and eradicate my white marks.  It had been such an anxious experience that I had not dared to repeat it more than a handful of times in my life, and when I moved to the city a series of apartments had meant I no longer had any sort of yard in which to tan.  The parks had become my yard instead, but I had never dreamed I would one day sunbathe not just fully nude in these public places, but with a confidence I’d never had at fifteen or so.  Who could ever have expected that?

After a while I realised that the other two women, whose examples I had followed, had slipped their outfits back on and left.  I alone in this area of the park was nude.  Yet I didn’t feel uncomfortable or worried.  I was no different to any other sunbather, other than that I had not even a bikini covering myself – but my experience had taught me that this was a safe place to lie almost-nude in the sun, why not fully nude?  Public nudity was allowed now, and it was only the social contract we observe – and my own sense of modesty – that discouraged it in me.  But here, with no friends, family or colleagues, only strangers minding their own business – here nakedness seemed a reasonable state to be in.

My lunchbreak over, I reached for my clothing.  I experienced a peculiar sense of disappointment as I dressed.

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Keep an eye on my Amazon author and Goodreads author page to see Brave Nude World when it is published.

Forced Nudity in The "Volunteer" and the Tami Smither series

It's probably become apparent now, but a central theme of my writing is scenarios in which a person (usually a young woman) is without clothing in a place where their nudity is the exception, rather than the norm.  Whether it's Becky in Best Friends With a Naked Girl streaking around the library at Lisa's university, or Rachel in my forthcoming novel Brave Nude World riding the subway naked, I seem to have a real weakness for putting naked people up against clothed people, often in public places.

In the majority of my stories, the people are naked because they want to be, because it's fun and enjoyable for them.  But imagine you weren't naked in public through your own choice but because you were somehow required to be - and for a very long time!  In other words, forced public nudity.

The concept of forcing a character to go naked in public concept relates broadly to the BDSM side of  the public nudity theme in erotic fiction.  To make a character be naked in front of other people is often to make them vulnerable, embarrassed, humiliated.  It's therefore the perfect action for a dominant character to do to a submissive one.  Much of this type of fiction is written in that mould.  A character does something they shouldn't, and is forced therefore to submit to the whim of an authority figure who, out of their own sadism, decides that the character should be forced to be naked in public.  It might be a mean boss making a secretary strip while at work to keep her job after a bad mistake, or a pervy college professor forcing a co-ed to attend class naked after they are caught cheating on a test. But the point is the humiliation and degradation of the naked submissive, who is robbed of free will and subjected to embarrassing exposure to teach them a lesson.

I was thinking about this concept in relation to what is one of my favourite public-nudity themed stories; The "Volunteer" by D H Jonathan.

On the surface, The "Volunteer" seems to be in keeping with that dom/sub, forced-public-nudity-as-humiliation power dynamic.  Pretty college student Dani screws up and cheats to get ahead, and is caught out by an influential sociology professor, Dr Slater.  Dr Slater uses the information about Dani's transgression to essentially blackmail her into taking part in a unique sociological experiment - she will test her fellow students attitude to nudity by attending class, social events and anything else on campus completely naked for the remainder of the semester - and pretend it is all her own idea.  The effect of her behaviour on others will be observed via a microphone and earpiece.  At the end of it, she'll not only have avoided academic punishment for her crime, she'll also be rewarded, enabling her to graduate debt-free and with the highest faculty recommendations to carry her to her future career.

It would seem, then, that we're about to have a classic dom/sub relationship between the professor and the student.  Dr Slater will force Dani to be naked, Dani will hate it, and the Doc will get off on the subsequent humiliation and degradation of the pretty girl while all the while sternly forcing her to do her bidding.

Except that isn't the book at all.  In fact, rather than desiring Dani's humiliation, the sociologists genuinely believe in their research (for some very personal reasons for Dr Slater, we later learn) and don't view what Dani is doing as any sort of punishment at all.

The only reason they blackmail Dani into "volunteering" is because they have been unable to find a genuine volunteer to take part and carry the study to a viable conclusion.  Desperation (remember, the Doc has some particularly personal reasons for wanting her research to succeed) pushes them down this dubious path, not a desire to assert authority or sadistically punish pretty girls.  True, they behave unscrupulously at times, and are ultimately no heroes.  But their motives remain somewhat higher than simply desiring Dani's sexual humiliation.

In the key scenes where Dani is persuaded to take part, or continue her participation, she always has a choice - she isn't going to be stripped against her will.  She can accept the consequences of her actions in cheating, and take the academic punishment that might well mess up her future dreams.  Or, she can undertake participation in an experiment where she will be naked in public for two months, in front of all her friends, peers and teachers, without even being able to offer the excuse that she's taking part in an experiment - but which will be over after that and, coming out of the other side of it, she will have financial security and a strong chance of getting the future she has always wanted.

Dani agonises over this choice - after all, wouldn't you? - but in the end she agrees to volunteer.  It might not have been a great choice, but she starts the experiment with the view that going around campus naked is the lesser of two evils compared to owning up to her misconduct.

Of course that lasts about two minutes before she realises what she's let herself in for - but rather than assert their authority and force her to stay naked against her will, the sociologists are supportive and even kind, constantly monitoring her safety as well as gathering their data.  Their role in the narrative, like many of the supporting characters, is to enable Dani's nakedness to continue even at points where she finds it unbearable - so, for example, a lecherous teacher who tries to assault her is quickly found out and dismissed - and they do so by making it more possible for Dani to cope, rather than by simply asserting their authority and threatening her with expulsion.

I'm inclined to compare The "Volunteer" to an earlier "naked in college" story - the Tami Smithers series, which begins with The Unintentional Nudist.  In this series, a college freshman panics when she is caught streaking on campus - an activity for which she fears she will be expelled - and explains her nakedness by stating that she has taken a religious vow to never wear clothing again.

Of course, Tami is then forced to make good on this hasty declaration and begin attending classes and everything else in the nude, not because she wants to, but because if she doesn't, the administration will know she lied (and is using the religious aspect of her story to claim protection from punishment on the grounds that it would be discrimination).

Where Tami's story and The "Volunteer" differ (aside from the fact that D H Jonathan has obviously put a lot more thought into shoring up his premise than the author of The Reluctant Nudist did: both require suspension of disbelief but Tami's story demands several crane-loads of suspension) is that Tami is from the start at odds with the authority figures in her college.  They seem to know - or outright know - that her story is a pack of lies - but as long as she walks the walk, they can't question her talking the talk.  As long as she continues to go everywhere naked, they can't prove she has lied - after all, who would ever pretend to be a person whose religion obligated permanent nudity if they didn't have to?  As her nudism is some sort of protected religious activity, to avoid a potentially costly discrimination suit, they have to force a confession from Tami that she made up her "religious nudist" status to cover up campus misbehaviour.

So they endeavour to either catch her out, or make her experience of being nude on campus so horrible and sexually humiliating that she gives up and confesses her lie.  They take sadistic delight in placing this naked girl in scenarios deliberately intended to maximise her exposure and embarrassment (for example, forcing her to do work placements in customarily male-only environments, or act as a life model in a series of ever-more-explicit poses) while constantly monitoring her behaviour for any sign of inconsistency in her religious nudism.  Even when, in later stories she leaves campus to visit home or travel, Tami finds the fear that the administration are still monitoring her means that she has no choice but to continue to be naked everywhere she goes, on the off-chance that some spy for the college might see her if she put her clothes on.  And of course, the more she does it, the worse consequences she will face if she ever cracks and confesses - her crime escalating from 'streaking on campus one time' to 'spending four years walking around in public completely naked' - so the more incentive she has to keep going.

The contrasts and commonalities between the two stories show two approaches to writing a "forced nudity" narrative.  Both are stories of young female college students pretending to be some sort of devoted nudist by going everywhere in public.  Tami has to pretend to be undertaking a religious vow, and Dani has to pretend she's a body freedom activist so that the integrity of the social experiment remains uncorrupted.  Both stories have to construct their narrative in ways that mean the protagonists continue to be naked in public long past the point where a real life woman would have said "screw it, I'll take the punishment for my original crime" and put her clothes back on.  And both use a young college student's natural obedience to authority figures to make that happen.

In the Tami stories, the authority figures are there simply to make Tami be naked 24/7 - they force her to endure the endless parade of humiliations they dream up in the hope of breaking her spirit.  But in The "Volunteer", the authority characters are, for the most part, on Dani's side. They want her to be able to continue her public nakedness even though they know it is difficult for her, and their primary concern is with keeping her safe.  They may have selfish reasons for doing so - they want their experiment to succeed - but from that selfishness comes a supportive factor that leaves Dani much less alone in her endeavour than Tami is.

It's one of the things that makes The "Volunteer" the better story, in my opinion.  In Tami's tale, humiliation upon humiliation is piled upon her while all the time she longs tearfully to be able to clothe herself and end this trial by endurance; as a reader, we start to become weary of her persistence.  Just take the punishment, you find yourself exclaiming as Tami once again laments her naked life and stares with longing at some clothes in a shop window.  No matter how much her college education means to her, her endless suffering seems somehow a disproportionate endurance.

But The "Volunteer" isn't about Dani enduring suffering.  It does a much more successful job of making her an agent in her own continued nakedness, as she gradually adjusts to each new experience and finds that, actually, this is something she can manage to pull off.  Of course, then events begin to escalate beyond the wildest imaginings of the sociologists - and beyond Dani's control - but by then she is in too deep and, again, manages to not just endure but adjust to and even enjoy her experiences.  The ending (which I will try not to spoil) leaves you in no doubt that Dani's experience of public nakedness has been a defining and ultimately positive one, no matter how difficult it was along the way.

Tami Smithers never gets a definitive conclusion.  Her stories are written by a multitude of individuals whose intent is to give the reader as much time to play in her universe as possible; and here status quo is the enemy, as instead of evolving and growing as a person, Tami starts and ends each new story the same utterly humiliated young woman, ever the victim of determinedly sadistic authority.  The stories about her aren't bad, although the original is kind of flat some of the later ones are written well and enjoyable to read up to a point, but I much prefer The "Volunteer" for Dani's spirit and agency than I do Tami's gritted-teeth endurance of her various authors' whims.

Read for yourself 
The "Volunteer" by D H Jonathan can be bought as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
The Tami Smithers stories have various authors and can be found all over the internet.  The original story, The Unintentional Nudist, can be read here.