Author Topic: My life experiences and process leading to acceptance of breasts, part 1  (Read 9315 times)

Offline Alchemist

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 492
I turned 12 in early 1960.  By that time my gynecomastia was very noticeable.  I’m 63 now and it didn’t go away “with pushups” or anything else as the doctors said.  I’m putting this under acceptance as it was life experiences as much as anything that has led to my current acceptance of my breasts.  Medically it was a zero at that time.  Nothing at all was going to be done.  You get the one minute speech that it can happen at puberty, generally it goes away and that was it.  It was that summer of ‘60 after turning 12 that the harassment started at the public pool.  I was followed around by boys of many ages.  They pointed and giggled and called me names.  It wasn’t just the breasts.  I was fat or maybe more accurately bloated but not obese.  By age 12 I was 5’10” and 190 pounds with size 12 feet.  To put it in perspective, I’m 220 pounds, 6’1”, wear an honest 52” jacket (not loose, just to have normal arm movement across back), have a 36 inch waist, 37 inch sleeve and have DD breasts. They stick out from my chest on the underside almost the width of my palms.  This made suit jacket lapels lay badly. I tended to wear 3 piece suits for business as the vest smoothed things out so the jacket would fit better.  I always needed to buy custom tailored suits because off the rack ones just didn’t fit.  Those always expected one’s waist to be 6 inches smaller than the chest. The “athletic” cut suits allowed for 8 inch drop.  My waist was always 12-16 inches smaller.

Since the questionnaire here asked breast size I decided to measure for the first time.  They were larger than I would have estimated, largely because of the illusion of size caused by having a large chest underneath them.   I’ve never had any doubt or had to ask “Is this the dreaded gynecomastia?”  It was as plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face.  These breasts are quite impossible to hide.  An interesting illusion is that looking at me in context they look smaller than my partner’s breasts.  However she has a 34 inch chest and mine is 52 inches so hers look much larger in comparison to her body.  She likes mine just fine.  My wife of 3 decades liked them but was jealous that they were larger and better shaped than her kind of pointy A cup breasts.

I can also pass the pencil test, under the breasts; the undersides of my breasts don’t touch down when standing.  Before I became very ill and put on 100+ pounds of water plus some fat, my waist was 34 inches at 175 pounds and my chest size was 48 inches.  My breast size then was about the same as now, 36 years later.  Being ill much of my life, I missed 1/3 of school year from k-college.  I was given all sorts of drugs.  Looking at the lists of drugs that can cause gynecomastia I often was taking several at a time.  Currently I’m taking levothyroxin, furosimide, morphine, occasional diazepam or lorazepam and testosterone as mine went through the floor with the methylb12 deficiency as with so many people.  As my breasts were already quite large I certainly didn’t worry about the drugs.  Most of the doctors I’ve seen shy away from the whole gynecomastia business. I’ve noticed a lot of doctors don’t handle body issues well.  They have their own.  As Dr Yost also had gynecomastia one can see how he developed an interest in this instead of the avoidance we usually see.   I can see that the various docs certainly do notice but virtually none say anything.  The most they ever say is “Have there been any changes?”  There have never been any for sure changes.  However in looking back at a picture from before I lost the 85 pounds of water I see that I had bloat in the chest and breasts as well.  Everything looks different by comparison when one’s stomach is blown up big and hard like a basketball with fluid and all tissues are bloated with water.  At the worst the top of my thigh muscle was no thicker than my thumb but you would never know looking at me as my whole body looked fat and bloated.  The water came off quickly in two segments after certain nutritional changes each time.  I also lost another 40+ pounds of fat and put on most of it again as muscle as I rehabilitated in the last 5 years with all the missing nutrients.  Since losing the water and fat and building muscle my breasts stick out farther than my stomach as well as the bloated tissue around them retreating.
My first experience with body harassment goes back to age 5-6 at day camp.  There I was harassed about penis size.   That’s weird considering the normal size of little boy’s penises in general.  That was by another 5-6 year old.  I wonder what his problem was.  I was entirely of normal weight at age 5.  My mother rushed me off to the doctor who pronounced my penis entirely average for that age.  However the doctor explained to her that I had a pubic fat pad into which my penis could entirely disappear.  That characteristic has been called “northern horse barbarian penis”; you can’t leave descendents if your penis freezes off riding a horse in extremely cold weather.  However, that word “fat” was the killer.  My mother was anorexic and had OCD.  Instead of accepting that I had a normal penis and that was the end of that she became obsessed with the fat pad.  She determined I had to lose enough weight for it to go away.

A few years later she developed postpartum depression with a miscarriage and 8 months after that had her first psychotic episode with the second miscarriage.  She systematically started changing my diet, restricting meat severely and other foods, especially animal protein foods, also, and hence restricting my b12 intake.  She projected her anorexia onto me.  Instead of losing weight I gained weight on the new diet plan.  I know now that the nutrition changes exasperated my genetic problems with b12 and vegetable folate (causes paradoxical folate deficiency in me) and caused me to pack on water, bloating me up rapidly which caused her to restrict my diet even more severely causing even more bloating.  I also developed the habit of over-eating whenever I wasn’t under her control as I felt like I was starving (I was, especially for methylb12, adensosylb12 and methylfolate).  She made sure I knew how shameful my body was because I was so “fat”.  She made sure that I knew how shameful my WHOLE body was and that it wasn’t fit to be seen by anybody.  So when my breasts grew starting at 11 she became my number one worst enemy.  She appeared to think that I was growing them deliberately to irritate her.  She was sure I was out to get her.  She had been trying to get doctors to medicate me into submission since I stopped her from physically abusing me in 3rd grade.  When I was 5 she had the doctor medicate me because I wasn’t able to naturally sleep as long as she thought I ought to, about 12 hours.   I didn’t have trouble sleeping, I just had trouble falling asleep by 7 pm.  I had at least as much embarrassment and shame about my stomach as about my breasts.   Her psychosis took 100% of family resources.  Whenever anybody else’s problems started getting some attention she self injured.  “Don’t upset your mother” became the rule of the house and she ruled the house with her upsets.

Junior high school was hell.  There was one boy who went around sticking pins into my breasts and rear end, and those of some of the large breasted girls, to “pop your balloons”.  In the crowds of the hallways nobody ever caught him in the act though we all knew who was doing it.  The school did nothing as nobody actually ever saw him do it but he was ALWAYS in position to have done it.  Gym class was a horror show with being marched through the showers and tossed a towel.  My breasts were the talk of the school.  They were bigger than those of most of the girls.  The good side of that was I started getting offers from the girls of the “you can see/feel mine if I can see/feel yours” after school.  I enjoyed those offers but getting passed such invitations in study hall was terrifying.  If caught the note would have been read out loud.  In high school the locker room was hell and I was constantly harassed.  Somebody who did darkroom work took nude photos of me in the shower, made hundreds of copies and passed them around the school and some other schools.  This was 62-66.   College was no better except for girls.  I started going out with the founder of the school nudist club.  I took up skiing in high school and continued in college, became a ski instructor and later a professional patrolman.  That was more my style of dress, lots of bulky clothing.

The last two years of college we had a two week nudist camp session at my mother’s summer place (she was hospitalized a lot at that time and wasn’t there) on a lake in Maine and invited friends from school, brothers and sisters and their boyfriends/girlfriends.  We could sleep at least 21 with every bed, hide-a-bed and roll-a-way filled.  It was great.  We spent most of every day nude; swimming, water-skiing, fishing, canoeing and games in front of a fire for warmth each evening.  It was the first time I was nude almost all the time for 2 weeks with a group of mixed gender people and nobody at all paid any attention what so ever to my breasts or cared in any way.  It was a most excellent experience.

A few years later I was broadsided by a red light runner and my back was broken in 3 places and nerve damage in my back.  From there on out it was one health matter after another, including ballooning to 325 pounds, much of it water, with congestive heart failure and massive vitamin deficiency diseases.  That was absolutely horrid, getting that “look” and comments under the breath at the supermarket when buying food or ordering dessert when eating out, for instance, from people who assumed “out of control eating” and making “moral” judgments. That was as bad as or worse than anything having to do with the gynecomastia.   When faced with life threatening problems, almost no exposure (largely housebound for decades) the whole body issue thing, and especially gynecomastia, largely lost its charge because it wasn’t stimulated.  In the 90s, as a bucket list type thing (I was dying) I started going to nudist clubs with my wife (yup, from college).  In the meantime I had become a tantric alchemist.  I engaged in the spiritual work; enlightenment meditations, etc, transforming the self, learning how to die and all that good stuff.  I also engaged in “tantric sex” becoming proficient with loads of mystical experiences.  Along the way I became a mystically initiated priest of Goddess.  If you look at Tarot cards many decks have the Alchemist pictured with breasts and an erection. It is said to symbolize the alchemical marriage in which a person unites their female and males halves.   I do some Goddess circles and I am willing to work “sky clad” (nude) or otherwise painted or costumed (typically mythical costuming), as desired, for the rituals.

My alchemical partner and I are members of a nudist club and spend a lot of time during the summer at the club where we have a full season RV.  At any nudist club, one sees quite a few men with gynecomastia to some degree or another.  It’s as common and normal as the statistics indicate.  Among nudists, breasts, or lack thereof, on any body, are a complete non issue.  There are women walking around with single or double mastectomies, with various stages and types of reconstruction or none at all.  They don’t have to hide their “shame” of BREAST cancer and BREAST surgery as I have heard it expressed by some textile compulsives.  The hostility towards the body in general in this American society is huge.  I can’t help but believe that this body fear and hate can affect our health.

There is a lot of fat at the nudist clubs too, more than anybody actually wants but then, that is a problem of our times. Almost half the folks in American society are fatter than they would prefer up to obese. As the statistics tell us almost half of men may have enlarged breasts to some degree or another at some time in their life.  This sounds pretty “normal” to me when it affects about half the population or half the male population, almost the definition of normal as in “common” or “typical”.  “Normal” isn’t necessarily healthy or desirable, just common.  Borderline methylb12/adenosylb2 deficiencies are “normal” in American society.   Because gynecomastia is hidden and “shameful” everybody thinks they are almost alone in it which makes it all the more traumatic.  I went through that hell for years and know it all too well.

When I went to work on body-issues/body-shame I got rid of it across the board.  I wasn’t going to try to pick and choose what to keep, if that is even possible. Why keep any of it?  Without the underlying function of body-shame() in the first place I’m not sure that body-shame(breasts) is a supported function, at least alchemically speaking, in remaking the self.  Bullies and the like strike out when they go for a trigger if it isn’t there.  They might still be annoying but that isn’t the same thing.  So when a lady at a local public pool (in Utah) a few years ago said “You shouldn’t be allowed to exhibit yourself to children like that.  I’d call the police if it would do any good” and pointing at my breasts. I told her to come to a nudist club and take off her bathing suit and we could all take a good look at what she is hiding of her body.  She went away sputtering.  If she saw my breasts in their currently shaved condition she would be positively apoplectic.  I have to say that I still don’t recognize myself in the mirror with my chest and stomach smooth and hairless after 40 years of being covered in hair, getting denser each year.  It actually caught me by surprise to see my breasts without a mat of hair, which had increased quite a bit since the picture that I posted taken about 6 years ago.  I really had looked shaggy before I shaved.  It took more than a month to get used to being shaved pubicly so I would expect the same with this.

 

Offline xelnaga13

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 518
First off, I would like to thank you for sharing your hardships and triumphs with the group. I'm shocked that 5 days have passed and no one has commented. You truly have lived through some profoundly awful events.

One thing that jumps off the page is your ability to take these events as they came. Lesser men would have crumbled in self pity.

Offline walt

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 266
hi all , i have a story of myown from 1979 i was working at a print shop and it was a very hot day in august and on break we all took off our shirts , i got a comment that genuinely pissed me off. it was hey you bit titted fat darn put your shirt back on . mind you i weighed a mear 180lbs and am 5,10, so i don`t think im fat . boobs yes since early childhood .since then i have taken a stance that if you don`t like what you see then piss off, not everyone can have this attitude as it affects some guys differently.

Offline Alchemist

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 492
First off, I would like to thank you for sharing your hardships and triumphs with the group. I'm shocked that 5 days have passed and no one has commented. You truly have lived through some profoundly awful events.

One thing that jumps off the page is your ability to take these events as they came. Lesser men would have crumbled in self pity.

Hi Xelnaga,

I'm shocked that 5 days have passed and no one has commented.

I'm not even surprised.  My post doesn't fit most of the categories.  Using GAMES PEOPLE PLAY terminology I'm not playing the usual games.  I not playing "Ain't They Awful?", "Ain't They Great?", "Woe Is Me" or "What Should I Do?".  How silly would it look to suggest a bra or compression garments as "just another piece of underwear" to a nudist?  For decades I had neurological problems that made any clothing uncomfortable, especially tight clothing.  I have also stated that purely considered as plastic surgery I have half a dozen priorities ahead of breasts if I were so inclined and if I would even be considered based on medical history.  My skin doesn't fit any more.  It's all stretched out of shape.  Instead I'm playing "Here They Are, So what" and borrowing from Walt "If You Don`t Like What You See Then Piss Off".  I find that a statement like "Jealous?" with a smile or "Whatever turns you on" with a smile usually makes it the last time that person says a thing. If they repeat again "So why are YOU so obsessed with my breasts?"  Have fun.

« Last Edit: October 20, 2011, 07:30:15 PM by Alchemist »

Offline KitMayer12

  • Posting Member
  • *
  • Posts: 8
I've had a woman's breasts since I was 10 years old. When I was 8, I attempted to jump my bike over a construction gorge; I landed wrong and teabagged my 'boys' rather hard. A few months later I started growing my 'girls' and when mom saw this, she was very understanding and assistive(being both a nurse and an ENORMOUS breasted woman, this helped) I've had over thirty years growing my breasts to their current 44DD/E cup size as well as wearing a brassiere to support them and it's been a flurry of either compliments from friends and family , bewildered looks from passerby  or outright hostility from fear-mongerers . It's just those things that happen and I accept it (And sorry about the car accident; been in my share of those to...NO FUN!)

Offline Alchemist

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 492
I've had a woman's breasts since I was 10 years old. When I was 8, I attempted to jump my bike over a construction gorge; I landed wrong and teabagged my 'boys' rather hard. A few months later I started growing my 'girls' and when mom saw this, she was very understanding and assistive(being both a nurse and an ENORMOUS breasted woman, this helped) I've had over thirty years growing my breasts to their current 44DD/E cup size as well as wearing a brassiere to support them and it's been a flurry of either compliments from friends and family , bewildered looks from passerby  or outright hostility from fear-mongerers . It's just those things that happen and I accept it (And sorry about the car accident; been in my share of those to...NO FUN!)

Hi KitMayer,

being both a nurse and an ENORMOUS breasted woman,


Interesting.  I have seen other posts similar with mothers and/or sisters and daughters having large/huge/enormous breasts.  My biological mother had huge early maturing breasts, as do my 3 biological half sisters, my son, both my daughters and myself.  Others have said the same thing.  I wonder how much of that is purely hereditary?  When my daughters were growing up they took a lot of heat in elementary school over the size and earliness of their breasts.  We wondered where that came from because the female line of my wife's didn't have anything like that.  When I found my bio-mother the mystery was solved. 


I've had over thirty years growing my breasts to their current 44DD/E cup size


I also have that DD cup size.  Compared to my daughters mine are small.  However compared to many other women and most men mine are quite large. 


it's been a flurry of either compliments from friends and family , bewildered looks from passerby  or outright hostility from fear-mongerers


And here we have the Rorschach or TAT effect that sizable breasts on men provokes.  People project all sorts of things.  Bewildered looks are pretty normal along with the classic double or triple takes.  The utter (udder?) hostility reactions are a different story.  I think that there are people out there that would like to see us locked up so that nobody has to look at us.  That was how people in wheelchairs, missing limbs, scarred faces, etc were treated for a long time.  I applaud Roger Ebert going on TV and not afraid to seen and photographed despite his cancer surgery.  I liked his show for decades and I sure don't hold it against him that he had cancer.

It's the hostility reaction that is puzzling.  As far as I can tell it is a response of people with a great deal of body-shame.  The ones who use it are bullies who are looking at any angle to intimidate a vulnerable person for any reason from merely making their life miserable to paying them less to even trying to destroy their career.  I've seen fat bullies use a person's fat against that person.  Perhaps some of the nastiest men also have gynecomastia and are taking their body shame, fear and hostility out on others with the same affliction.  The only women that have ever said anything to me of a hostile nature have all had small breasts and presumably a lot of body shame.  It's like these people that say "Only people with near perfect bodies ought to be allowed to go nude" and get upset that nudist clubs are filled with people who are far less than perfect.  They have a normal range of body variations.  Most of them are older than 30 and don't qualify under the "young" and beautiful prejudice, and most never did when young.  There is a huge amount of body hostility built into our culture.  The more anti-body our culture gets the more intense the harassment about male breast have gotten.  And this proliferation of "she-males", which I consider pretty weird, causes even more hostility amongst those who harass men with breasts.  Sounds like it could be the makings of a Mel Brooks movie, you know "MEN WITH BREASTS, BIG BREASTS".






Offline Neil123

  • Bronze Member
  • **
  • Posts: 56
Alchemist, I swear you are an amazing smart person. To be honest, and this may surprise you considering your life story, I think you have dealt and are dealing with gyne MUCH BETTER than most men. you are dealing with gyne much better than me! Yes I guess/understand you had worse periods where it was more difficult.
I believe the 2 main reasons you are in a good situation today are: Number one - YOU ARE MARRIED #2 you are ~60yrs old more mature hence cares less about what others think and even if you care are able to superbly explain their psychology seeing it is not about you as much as about them.
Regardless of the above, and perhaps I show some maturity here too:), I am still considering surgery hence mentioned not coping as good as you.
I got divorced recently and OMG how this hyne reemerges ESPECIALLY when a beautiful Thai woman I dated and had the luck of sleeping with a few times, could not stop looking/talking about my gyne saying she is picky which was just too much for me. you were right again - she has small breast and this may be related. The reason I have not thought about this as much before reading your comment about women with small breasts, is she was soo hot it never crossed my mind maybe she feels about her own body. what I am still not sure about is a woman saying she is picky does not go together with feeling bad about how she looks (or maybe it does? I dont know)
Sincerely,
Neil

Offline Alchemist

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 492
Alchemist, I swear you are an amazing smart person. To be honest, and this may surprise you considering your life story, I think you have dealt and are dealing with gyne MUCH BETTER than most men. you are dealing with gyne much better than me! Yes I guess/understand you had worse periods where it was more difficult.
I believe the 2 main reasons you are in a good situation today are: Number one - YOU ARE MARRIED #2 you are ~60yrs old more mature hence cares less about what others think and even if you care are able to superbly explain their psychology seeing it is not about you as much as about them.
Regardless of the above, and perhaps I show some maturity here too:), I am still considering surgery hence mentioned not coping as good as you.
I got divorced recently and OMG how this hyne reemerges ESPECIALLY when a beautiful Thai woman I dated and had the luck of sleeping with a few times, could not stop looking/talking about my gyne saying she is picky which was just too much for me. you were right again - she has small breast and this may be related. The reason I have not thought about this as much before reading your comment about women with small breasts, is she was soo hot it never crossed my mind maybe she feels about her own body. what I am still not sure about is a woman saying she is picky does not go together with feeling bad about how she looks (or maybe it does? I dont know)
Sincerely,
Neil


Hi Neil,

I don't know enough about Thai culture to know what their body shame, fears and attractions are all about.  Albert Ellis in the 1950s came up with a therapeutic method of desensitizing people about their fears.  He found that the neurotic ladies he treated had 9 or more things they disliked about their body while healthy ladies had 5 or fewer, regardless of what their bodies were actually like.  He wrote about this in THE AMERICAN SEXUAL TRAGEDY.  Being "picky" about the other persons body can be a control mechanism, a way to bully them.


what I am still not sure about is a woman saying she is picky does not go together with feeling bad about how she looks (or maybe it does? I dont know)

 A nudist club experience can be very enlightening.  Walking out at the pool on a crowded summer Saturday an inexperienced person expects to be noticed.  I think that many are disappointed that nobody notices them, not even if they are men with breasts or women with a hypothetically "perfect" body.  What would she do, point out all the "flaws" with all the bodies around?  She would find herself very out of sync with the environment.  She is "picky" about what?  What kind of body a person has to have to be worthy of seeing her nude?  What kind of body the person has to have for sex with her?  What kind of body the person has to have to share conversation, food or drink with her?

This "picky" might be a narcissism  thing.  Who has a great enough body to be a worthy viewing exchange with her?  Maybe she feels that her body is so great that only other worthy bodies are worthy of participating with her body.  This is an area in which the unspoken assumptions are rarely spoken because they sound ridiculous when spoken.


Offline rez

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 1
That was a very good post. I have been trying for years to be as un-judgemental of people for their bodies and appearances as I can be, and this served to reenforce the value of it in my mind.

I am pretty certain I've got it too, not too badly but enough to be noticeable. Havent met a doctor smart enough to do a real diagnosis of it though, and its not bad enough that I feel like searching for a specialist. Honestly I dont care about it any more, I do a lot of weight lifting and have completely changed my body composition and changed my priorities over the past years, its become a non-issue for me.

You mentioned heredity. I think there is definitely a heritable aspect to it. Mine started developing when I was young, due to over eating and eating tons of candy and junk food all the time. The first time I really noticed it was in about 4th grade. Fast forward a dozen years and my younger sister is in the same situation I was, over eating all the time and eating tons of junk food, and during that same time in her life she started developing breasts. Except they did not have the round shape like a woman's breasts, they looked exactly like a male's gynecomastia breasts, and exactly like mine did (and still do to an extent). She is in her preteens now and they are starting to fill in more, though she wears a bra regularly now so that obscures their natural shape (not that I am being a pervert or anything! just making an observation)

While she was getting fat, I was going through the 'fitness-phase' of my life, spending a lot of time getting in shape and losing the weight I had gained from eating junk food gluttonously when I was younger. It pained me to see her making the exact mistakes that I made, knowing she would suffer the same social stigmas I did. When she started gaining weight I tried to caution her by telling her to stop eating so much junk food, that she would get fat if she eats too much, stuff like that. It was the only thing I could really think of doing. But she got her eating habits from our father, like I did too. The worst part is that even he started saying this crap about how she was getting fat; except he is fatter than any of us, and the one that caused it all with his poor eating example! Anyway, I feel especially bad now about my role in undoubtedly making my younger sister feel uncomfortable about her body image. I am away at college, so I dont see her often. Its not like I can be there for her, and even when we are together I am not sure how to make her feel good about herself, or what I could do about it now.

Not sure how I would fare with a nudist crowd, honestly I am pretty vain and overly proud about my appearance. Even though it is nothing special, I take great pride in the relatively small bit of musculature I have built so far. Not that I am judgmental of others, I am really the only person I care about.

Offline Alchemist

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 492
That was a very good post. I have been trying for years to be as un-judgemental of people for their bodies and appearances as I can be, and this served to reenforce the value of it in my mind.

I am pretty certain I've got it too, not too badly but enough to be noticeable. Havent met a doctor smart enough to do a real diagnosis of it though, and its not bad enough that I feel like searching for a specialist. Honestly I dont care about it any more, I do a lot of weight lifting and have completely changed my body composition and changed my priorities over the past years, its become a non-issue for me.

You mentioned heredity. I think there is definitely a heritable aspect to it. Mine started developing when I was young, due to over eating and eating tons of candy and junk food all the time. The first time I really noticed it was in about 4th grade. Fast forward a dozen years and my younger sister is in the same situation I was, over eating all the time and eating tons of junk food, and during that same time in her life she started developing breasts. Except they did not have the round shape like a woman's breasts, they looked exactly like a male's gynecomastia breasts, and exactly like mine did (and still do to an extent). She is in her preteens now and they are starting to fill in more, though she wears a bra regularly now so that obscures their natural shape (not that I am being a pervert or anything! just making an observation)

While she was getting fat, I was going through the 'fitness-phase' of my life, spending a lot of time getting in shape and losing the weight I had gained from eating junk food gluttonously when I was younger. It pained me to see her making the exact mistakes that I made, knowing she would suffer the same social stigmas I did. When she started gaining weight I tried to caution her by telling her to stop eating so much junk food, that she would get fat if she eats too much, stuff like that. It was the only thing I could really think of doing. But she got her eating habits from our father, like I did too. The worst part is that even he started saying this crap about how she was getting fat; except he is fatter than any of us, and the one that caused it all with his poor eating example! Anyway, I feel especially bad now about my role in undoubtedly making my younger sister feel uncomfortable about her body image. I am away at college, so I dont see her often. Its not like I can be there for her, and even when we are together I am not sure how to make her feel good about herself, or what I could do about it now.

Not sure how I would fare with a nudist crowd, honestly I am pretty vain and overly proud about my appearance. Even though it is nothing special, I take great pride in the relatively small bit of musculature I have built so far. Not that I am judgmental of others, I am really the only person I care about.

Hi Rez,

Not sure how I would fare with a nudist crowd, honestly I am pretty vain and overly proud about my appearance.


It's actually far easier than you would imagine.  Remember, these clubs are  about rest and recreation.  The BIG action is the Saturday night dance or the big potluck or pig roast or whatever. The all the time action is the sauna, swimming pool and hottub, bocci, tennis and various other indoor and outdoor games and sports. It's all about being sociable and leaving the stressors behind.  It appears to take no more than a couple of hours for most folks to get used to it.  There are others who go out in the woods and love the solitude.  What isn't there is all the body insecurity that is seen at the textile beaches and clubs.  So maybe the question for some people is can they get used to not being noticed for their body?   Something I learned doing wedding photography was that people are well aware of what they look like.  I couldn't change that in my pictures.  All I could do was do my best to make them look the best I could in well done photographs and help them remember the day and the good times.  Without the clothing all of the "What would he/she think of me if he/she saw what my body was REALLY like?" insecurities disappear entirely.  I met a woman in her 20s some years back vacationing at a nudist club.  She said "Once you've done the nude vacation there is no gong back".  People at the clubs are generally friendly, accepting, polite and so on.  There is a lack of innuendo, deprecatory remarks and things like that.


I have been trying for years to be as un-judgemental of people for their bodies and appearances as I can be, and this served to reenforce the value of it in my mind.


That's good.  Metaphysically I know that "I" am not my body, nor are the other people.  When one see's hundreds and thousands of bodies over time one can realize that they are all different.  While most all of them are "ordinary" not one of them is average.  An "average" body is an abstraction that doesn't exist.  Looking at the pictures here I've seen a whole range of gynecomastia situations. I had always expected that they would look like me so it was a surprise that it included many guys I never would have expected. There is a whole lot of that to be seen at nudist clubs because the guys are not hiding it.  They don't have the automatic body-shame reactions going on.  There just isn't any question of lack of acceptance.  Because of the nonjudgemental attitudes at nudist clubs I had really forgotten all about the gynecomastia based social fears before coming across this site.  I had gotten used to being "just another ordinary body".  After decades of harassment and fears of harassment it is great to just be ordinary and acceptable.  My "specialty" house drink that I serve to folks visiting me at my site is fresh ground French roast coffee with cream or whatever else desired.  My reputation there is based on my personality and cooking, not my body.  Have fun.





Offline Whatcha

  • Posting Member
  • *
  • Posts: 17
You make going to nudist vacation seems so good, that I wish I can save some of my money and goes to one of that ^-^.

Offline Alchemist

  • Gold Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 492
You make going to nudist vacation seems so good, that I wish I can save some of my money and goes to one of that ^-^.

Hi Whatcha,

It helps to understand the language in picking a club or resort for a vacation.  There are those that are "rustic".  These tend to be heavier on camping.  Small travel trailers or RVs tend to be the accommodations, lots of tent camping.  There is often a community kitchen for use by campers. Often there are rooms or small cabins for rent.  These clubs tend to be pretty quiet.  On the other hand, in Florida especially, and some locations in Europe, there are 5 star hotels and million dollar condos with party all night expectations and the jet set crowd.  The vegetarian and group exercise at dawn are things of the past though there are plenty of clubs with yoga, full exercise gym rooms, inside and outside pools, lakes, water skiing, fishing, sailing, ocean front cabins and the like.  So costs can range from $60/day per person for a couple to hundreds of dollars per day per person.  The AANR clubs are family clubs though some cater to singles in a big way, others don't.

If you are not of the "beautiful person jet setter" type, avoid the resorts catering to such.  Just down the road from one such is another club that bills itself as a Perry Como type place.  One of the nicest clubs I'm familiar with has cabins in the woods around a private lake, no pool, just 72 degree lake water and all kinds of water sports with no alcohol on premises.  So choose carefully.

I do this for fun, vacationing and relaxing.  I hike the miles of trails.  I photograph rock formations, flowers, scenery and so on.  Some clubs have camera clubs and some don't allow cameras anywhere but the wild areas.  And what one discovers is that no two bodies are the same and no body is perfect.  It's great to have bodies not matter in the least. I find that there is an honesty and openness that makes the nudist experience qualitatively different, and good.  It made all the difference in accepting my body instead of hating it and suffering over fears of what other people think.

Offline Whatcha

  • Posting Member
  • *
  • Posts: 17
I haven't visit this forum for more than a year :P, sorry. Well, I don't live in a country where we have place for nudist. I live in Indonesia :D .


 

SMFPacks CMS 1.0.3 © 2024