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Background
In October 2020, the Naturist Symbol emerged as a solution to the problem of recognizing naturists in day to day life, even when they are clothed. The symbol could be used online (e.g. social media profiles) and offline (e.g. T-shirts, cars). Interestingly, it was the result of a grassroots campaign, driven by some volunteers from Europe, and not by any of the naturist federations or associations. The campaign primarily ran on Twitter, over a period of almost 2 months. After multiple rounds of public voting, this symbol with a yellow sun and blue waves was chosen out of some 20+ submissions (including variations). In one of the rounds of voting, the voters were presented with cues on how the symbol would practically look on different materials -
The campaign reached its logical conclusion by finalising the symbol we know as the Naturist Symbol today - the one with the yellow sun and blue waves.
However, as happens with every project, criticism started to come in, initially for the process of selection of the symbol, accusing that it left out many from participating. However, among notable people, Hector Martinez was one of the first to show interest and did an interview of Bjor of #TeamNaturist. Linda Weber was one of the early supporters of the symbol, and is an official influencer of the team, as of today. Nick & Lins (Naked Wanderings) wrote a detailed blog post in the same year. What they wrote applies even today.
Over the course of the next 5 years, the usage of the symbol grew via successful marketing and collaborations by the #TeamNaturist and through active adoption and participation by the members of the community.
However, criticism also continued and few more points of criticism came up. Cut to present day, the INF-FNI, which is the global umbrella organisation of associations/societies of countries, has decided to have an official discussion on whether to formally recognise the symbol in their October conference. They have made a blog post about the same on their website. The blog post is one of the most commented ones in the recent posts made on the website, and almost every possibility has been put forward. Majority of the comments seem to be positive. We tried to go through most of them and in this post we will try to add our thoughts/opinions on the criticism, which we would have added as comments on the post.
Let's try to address all the points which we have seen in the discussions so far -
1. Should a more "naked" symbol be preferred?
No. That won't serve any purpose and would rather spoil the current purpose. Many fail to understand the current purpose or simply overlook it. Maybe they don't relate to the problem.
Some feel anguish and frustration at the idea of creating a secret symbol for a life choice that is already shrouded in mystery and mistrust. We can understand where they are coming from. May be the Federation can discuss on how/where to put up the symbol or where not to put it. The symbol was never designed to use as a representation of naturism/nudism outside nudist/naturist events. Yet, this is a concern posted by many. They fail to understand that the Naturist Symbol is not a one-size-fits-all solution. For nudist events, the INF symbol may be used. If it is not already being used, then that may be taken up as a separate thread and discussion needs to happen on whether the INF logo is appropriate for being used or another logo needs to come up.
2. Is the symbol reproducible and recognizable?
The symbol is definitely recognizable. It may not be 100% reproducible from memory. One may miss a few strokes of the sun. But, any layman can look at the symbol and draw it fairly well. As long as people can draw the symbol on sand or on the rocks/walls of a venue, this should be good.
3. To have a few people decide the symbol is wrong.
Well, then what is stopping another group of people to suggest a better symbol and make it more accepted by the community? We think, the fact that no other symbol could pose a challenge in the last 5 years, tells a lot about the success of the present symbol.
Apart from the above comments, the INF-FNI asks these questions -
1. Should a symbol created outside official structures be embraced retrospectively?
Why not? It already means something has survived the test of time. If federation's involvement can add a momentum to the already ongoing campaign and solve some challenges being faced, of course it makes sense.
We are pretty hopeful that the recognition and push for adoption by the federation can help a lot in this situation. When we attended NATCON in 2023 and 2024, there were many workshops/speeches organised but there was no mention of the symbol. While growth of participation was discussed and including more people has always been an agenda, but shockingly the symbol was never mentioned. It remains to be seen what can be the impact if federations/associations get a push from INF/FNI to promote the symbol in their events. As of today, the symbol is growing despite the involvement of many federations.
Can it serve as a tool for unity without compromising transparency and openness?
Not really sure what this question is about. The symbol is available for free use and even online merchandise stores are allowed to freely use it for commercial purposes. It is available for the common people as long as it is for non-sexual nudism.
Or is it more appropriate to allow its continued informal use without institutional endorsement?
The federation would then miss a great chance to pitch in where it is needed. In the ever changing landscape of nudism/naturism, where it is a constant challenge for existing players to keep being relevant, it is not only challenging for the resorts, but also for the federations. There is a lot of work to do in multiple phases. We are at the first phase now, which is popularising the symbol. The next step would be using the symbol where it is supposed to be, i.e. in non nudist setup.
We have observed that the symbol is mostly seen on nude pics/nudist profiles, which is not really the end goal. How many people use it in their regular profiles? When we ran some campaigns to promote the usage of the symbol in regular profiles on people, most of them declined, because they were concerned of people asking them details about the symbol and even browsing themselves on the internet. So we decided that it may be too early to work on popularising the symbol on regular profiles. Also, there were many who brushed off the possibility of finding someone based on the symbol. Never had they ever seen a regular profile using the symbol. This brings us to the conclusion that, at least in India/South Asia, the risk vs benefits of using the symbol outweigh in favour of the risks, at present.
The Federations could do a lot of important work in this phase.
Miscellaneous comments
Simon T questioned the way the symbol has been marketed. He accuses that the Team representing the symbol of using dubious marketing, presenting the symbol as if it had already got an "official" status.
It is not clear what the team claimed, but the symbol had already passed through a public voting process which is well documented in their website.
Evan Nix has a good point - Where we see the symbol appearing. Can INF-FNI do something about it?
Wilson Altice has a great suggestion - Have another Symbol - Create another symbol for this purpose.
Marc explains the importance of bottom-up approach and something which others might have missed.
Our work towards popularising the Symbol
The first thing we remember about the symbol is that we saw it used as the profile pic by many naturists. Having no idea what it was, we ignored it that point, for some time, may be few months. Then, sometime during 2021, someone approached us to include the symbol in our Nudist Ecosystem project. It was like a Eureka moment for us. We felt like we had found something we had been looking for since so long. In India, there are a lot of nudists/naturists, probably many who we meet everyday, unknowingly, but it is very difficult to find, because it is a taboo topic and it is immediately linked to sex and weirdness. We immediately felt immense respect and gratitude towards the team behind the symbol, and eventually to all the participants and the community which participated in the idea. Did we feel left out? Not really, as the symbol seemed to satisfy everything we had wanted, probably even better. Nobody would know what it meant for, at least at first glance. It looked cool enough to be printed on merchandise. It is definitely the one we liked most out of the entries. Over the last few years, we have tried to contribute our bit towards popularising the symbol - incorporated it on our Nudist Ecosystem (this was probably a result of someone approaching us to include the symbol). Then onwards, we incorporated the symbol on our annual Happy Nude Year Calendar, the online participation drives which led to our Nudist Directory campaign, giving away Naturist Symbol stickers to winners of our Review Submission Contests.
