A naturist club, community, centre, resort or facility is a place where nudity is openly permitted. The terms are loosely defined and there is some regional differences. In the main clothing is optional, except in certain prescribed areas, like the swimming pool or the sunbathing lawns but some more traditional facilities do insist on complete nudity–when practical. This distinction is a source of controversy among some naturists. It is sometimes not possible for all the staff at a naturist facility to remain naked due to prevailing health and safety regulations.
- A landed or members’ naturist club is one that owns its own facilities. Non-landed (or travel) clubs meet at various locations, such as private residences, swimming pools, hot springs, landed clubs and resorts, and rented facilities. Landed clubs are run by their members on democratic lines or by one or more owners who make the rules. They have the right to select who becomes members and what the members obligations should be. This usually involves a share of the work necessary to maintain or develop the site.
Many clubs promote frequent social activities. Some of the clubs have stricter entrance requirements than some traditional ‘country clubs’, including the requirement to supply references, a sponsoring member, a trial membership, committee approval and/or, criminal background checks. UK clubs are now required to have child protection policies in place, and designated child protection officers.
The international naturist organisations were mainly composed of representatives of landed clubs. A nudist colony is no longer a favored term, but it is used by naturists as a term of derision for landed clubs that have rigid non inclusive membership criteria, and in meta-data on naturist websites.
- A holiday centre is a facility that specialises in providing apartments, chalets and camping pitches for visiting holidaymakers. The centre is run commercially, and visitors are not members and have no say in the management. Most holiday centres expect visitors to hold an INF card, that is be a member of their national organisation, but some have relaxed this restriction, relying on the carrying of a trade card. Holiday centres can be quite small, just a couple of hectares or large occupying over 300 hectares.
In a large holiday centre there will be swimming pools, sports pitches, an entertainment program, kid’s clubs, restaurants and supermarkets. Some holiday centre’s allow regular visitors to purchase their own chalets, and generations of the same families will visit each year. Holiday centres are more relaxed about textilists than members clubs; total nudity is usual in the swimming pools and the beaches, while on the football pitches, or in the restaurants in the evening, it is rare.
- A naturist resort is, to a European, an essentially urban development where naturism is the norm. Cap d’Agde in France, and Vera Playa in Spain are examples. Here there are apartment blocks, with privately-owned and rented apartments. For some residents this is their year-round home. One finds all the usual facilities of a small town. In the US usage, a naturist resort can mean a holiday centre.
- A free beach or naturist beach is one where people can be entirely free of clothes. Some beaches have been naturist beyond living memory, and their status has been formalised thus becoming official beaches, others have become official through the policies of the local authority, to meet a perceived need or economic advantage. ther beaches are unofficial but naturism is known to be tolerated. In some European countries, such as Denmark and Norway, all beaches are clothing optional, while in others like Germany there are naturist sunbathing areas in public parks.
Though free beaches developed separately from national naturist bodies, these bodies are taking an interest and helping to protect them legally, and through the publication of guidelines of acceptable behaviour. In North America, the Free Beach Movement was the name of a group that was opposed to the direction of the official nudist organisation, the ASA, and set up the rival body The Naturist Society.
- Freikörperkultur (FKK) literally translated as free body culture is the name for the general movement in Germany. The abbreviation is widely recognised all over Europe and often found on informal signs indicating the direction to a remote naturist beach.
