2015.12.06 Stuff
Christchurch summer temperatures have already surpassed 30 degrees and naturists are making the most of it.
While over-60s still make up the largest contingent, a Canterbury group says its younger membership is on the rise.
President Michael Ward said under-30s made up about a fifth of their 100-strong group, which frequented Spencer Park, Waimairi Woodend and Banks Peninsula's Hikuraki Bay.
"There was a huge membership uptake in the 1970s, but those people are retiring or getting too old or even dying. Recently we are getting newer, younger people," Ward said.
Parry West, 19, has been a naturist her entire life. Other teens found it shocking, she said.
"I was going to a protest and some of my friends were like, 'what's next – going to a nudist beach?' and I sort of said, 'well, yeah'. They were completely shocked, they thought I was joking."
While some her own age found naturism a strange concept, she never felt judged.
"It's interesting though, the guys are way more open to it and say they might give it a go, but the girls just get freaked out by the thought of being naked."
Naturism was still most popular for those aged over 60 and plenty were soaking up the rays at Hikuraki Bay on Saturday.
Fiona Guest, 46, was among them.
She first tried naturism about 30 years ago, when she was 16, and her boyfriend's family went nude on the beach.
"In later years what I hadn't expected is that there is a freedom to be ourselves that most woman don't experience, free to have a bit of tummy flab... you are just you."
She said it was empowering for women to shake off the modern expectation of what the female body should look like.
"After having three kids things weren't quite in the same place as they used to be but it's actually okay to have a few wobbly bits and things like that."
Ward, who is the Free Beaches NZ president, said being nude was "an antidote to the material world".
He pitied beachgoers who tried to change out of wet tangled togs on the sand.
"If you walk past someone trying to wriggle out of one set of clothes so they can wriggle into another set of clothes, you just wonder, why are they doing that?"
Nude Beaches New Zealand said there is no law prohibiting mere public nakedness, but police could consider charges for behaviour considered obscene, indecent, offensive or disorderly.
