If you’re going on a nudist holiday, what do you pack in your suitcase?

The answer is: suncream. Loads of suncream. Very powerful, factor 250, viagra flavoured suncream.

When you walk along our beach here to the eastern (or possibly western, I have no idea, no clue and absolutely no desire to find out) extreme, you come across a rope barrier and a sign:

‘Nudist Beach; don’t cross over if this will offend you.’

Willy Beach. As I call it.

And to seasoned European travellers, this is no shock, no surprise, nothing new. Every beach in Europe has a ‘naturist’ section. Where we keep the fat naked Germans. And their knackwurst.

Topless bathing is de rigeur in France, Italy, Spain and nudist sections appear for the broad-minded exhibitionists who like to dangle in pubic. Sorry, public.

But this is not Europe. This is, to all intents and purposes, America. Where they don’t have topless sunbathing, they don’t do nudity, they maintain a prudish presbyterian puritanism that precludes publicly prancing penises and bare breasts. (I ran out of ‘p’s).

Many years ago we were on a beach in Cape Cod. It had been raining and then was suddenly lovely so we parked at a completely empty beach. Natalie was 4 and ran to the beach in her bikini bottoms. Rachie was 15 months and didn’t do anything really.
A life guard appeared out of nowhere to inform me that ‘topless bathing is illegal on the beaches of Massachusetts, so could I please cover my daughter’.

Ahhhh, I thought, this is finally proof that Americans can do ‘ironic’ when they choose and this is like a joke? Like a joke, but without the funny bit. Cos he wasn’t laughing when I did. He was the most earnest young man since Brigham Young.

‘But she’s four years old’ I informed him, in case he’d mistaken her for a 28 year old babe with a chest.
‘Yes, but she’s topless’.
‘Fucking right she’s topless; why wouldn’t she be???’

So rather than incur the wrath of the Massachusetts legal teams, I took off my shorts and covered her top half.

If only.

So how can Mexico get away with nudism without upsetting its major source of income?
And you can’t help but think that this is Bangkok syndrome all over again, where a fine, moral and beautiful place is raped, plundered and pillaged to provide what Americans want to have, but not in their own home.

This place is probably choc full of Bostonians running around with drinks in their hands and no clothes on.

Hypocrites.

Happy 2014

A xxxx