Background
We understand that there is a huge gender-imbalance among nudism enthusiasts in India and the volume of males who keep coming for whereabouts of the meetups and some specific people is overwhelming. We keep receiving messages asking us to arrange meetups as well. We try to reply to each of them, but it is simply impossible for us to respond to each of them. Even if we give some of them some pointers, we are afraid more people would come to us looking for those pointers and further details. So, the best way for us is to completely deny giving any information and instead give them some avenues for participation so that they can showcase themselves and then get connected to others themselves. We also try to give them some rewards for participation always. We have been connecting more frequently to those participating in some way and also have spoken to many participants of the audio campaign we did some time back and more initiatives. They need to understand that the more they participate, the more they are going to be known and will start to build their reputation within the community. This could lead to empowerment of more individuals and they would no more need to rely on the few well known or active nudists.
We believe that the Naturist Symbol is a great work of innovation and with the community coming out to participate to flaunt it can make a huge difference in empowering the regular nudists. We have been trying to promote the Naturist Symbol, in whatever small way possible with our limited resources, ever since we came to know about its significance in the 2nd half of 2021. We have been running our weekend surveys on our Instagram stories since mid 2021, wherein we have been covering various topics of significance and some of them receive a lot of participation. Since last few months, we have reduced the frequency and have been running them every alternate weekend.
Pilot campaign
We ran the 41st edition of our weekend survey on 18th September. This time we asked our followers to share a pic of themselves flaunting the naturist symbol in one of the pics on their social media and share the same with us so that could showcase themselves in front of the nudist community. We also promised every participant a free invite to the Naturist Hub Platform, which is a unique social media platform by Nick & Lins who drive nakedwanderings.com. We designed a flyer explaining the steps involved and the details on how to overlay the symbol on the pic and extended the event duration to an entire week. We also volunteered to do the picture editing for the participants in case they faced issues. We then started to get some participation each day. We hope to complete 10 entries by the weekend.
Phase 2
If we reach the target of 10 participants in the pilot campaign, which ends on 25th September, we are planning to make it bigger. This time we will share the flyers on the various platforms we are in, like Twitter, Reddit, Instagram posts etc., for greater visibility. However, the showcasing of the pic will happen on our Instagram and Facebook stories only, because most of our participants seem to be comfortable with this as the pics disappear in a day.
We hope that this reward of getting the viewership of fellow nudists and the chances of getting connected will motivate at least 20 or more people to participate. We would also hope to get at least one or two female participants this time, unlike the complete zero so far.
The Naturist Symbol, with trasparent background, for using as an overlay on your picture
Lack of female participation
We are afraid that some of our female followers are already facing a situation of getting too many messages by male profiles, who might be doing a lookup of the list of our followers. One of our female followers confirmed the same, that she is getting a lot of messages by people asking for boudoir photography and for confirming whether it was her voice in one of the audio campaigns we did recently. She told us she would not participate in the ongoing campaign as she does not want to risk taking more trouble at this point, due to some personal reasons. Given this scenario, we actually need some brave females to come forward and take charge of handling the situation and then share their experiences, so that it gets easier for the others.
Going forward
So far, we have almost 10 people who have been in regular contact with us after some sort of participation. We would like to take this number to 50, so that then when we organise or facilitate an online group discussion on various topics of interest, in near future, we get at least 10 people who attend purely with the intention of discussion and carrying forward this movement building more momentum.
An updated blog (with an FAQ section as well) has been posted here.
