Question for anyone about ediquite about looking

[Naked In Florida]

I have been wondering and I apoligize for my bad spelling in the topic, but whats apporpiate for looking at someone when at a resort or a beach. Is a quick glance ok or 2 seconds. Is 5 seconds to long, cause I like to look but I dont want to be accused of staring and being perverted which I am neither of. I know staring is wrong but how can you differ from staring and looking?

[Naked In Florida]

I have been wondering and I apoligize for my bad spelling in the topic, but whats apporpiate for looking at someone when at a resort or a beach. Is a quick glance ok or 2 seconds. Is 5 seconds to long, cause I like to look but I dont want to be accused of staring and being perverted which I am neither of. I know staring is wrong but how can you differ from staring and looking?

[Bartamus]

Luckyheart: What works for me is the
non-chalant look. In other words..surveying
the entire scene to make it seem like you're
not focused on one person.

[David77]

LH,
Wow! That's a good question! It can be asked, "What is the difference between looking and staring"?. When we stare we are looking, but when we are looking we are not necessarily staring. When we are staring we have a great fixation (an intense fixed gaze) on what we are looking at, and when we are "merely looking" we are viewing the sights in our visual field more casually. I don't think that there is any time limit for looking at the various sights in front of us, but if we are making someone uncomfortable and they interpret our looking as staring, then we should have the courtesy to divert our sight elsewhere. People who are nude, I have found, sometimes have more sensitivity to people merely looking at the view in front of them, so we should be aware of the possibility that they may think that we are staring. I don't think that we should mentally time ourselves and then put imaginary blinders on. Let us continue to enjoy our wholesome, innocent sight, but not unwittingly make someone uncomfortable.

[Gary Naturist]

Looking vs staring? Staring becomes more of a problem the closer you get to a person. Think about how uncomfortable it is when someone sitting across from you in a bus stares straight at you and no one else.

The worst example of staring is the guy at a c/o beach who positions himself just below the feet of a woman lying on her back.

So, staring from far away is not a problem, but staring close up is.

Gary

[jerrykc]

Hello,
When I am with other nudists I always treat others the same as I do when they have clothes on. I never look a person over when they have clothes on and I don't look them over when they are nude. I try to always keep eye contact and talk to another persons face.I can see very well that they are nude but I do not detail parts of their body with my eyes.
My best advise is to treat other people as you would if they were wearing clothes.Staring at others is never polite with or without.

[Naked Bob 2]

I think it has already been stated but my opinion is that you should treat them the way you treat people with clothes on. Hey everyone looks a little, that's okay. Just don't stare at them. It is rude even if they have clothes on. It's just that you treat their other areas the same way you would treat their face or hands or whatever. No big deal, just another a body part.

[David77]

JerryKC,
Your statement above, about eye contact when talking with someone, reminded me of the post made here a number of months ago by a woman who had a good sense of humor. She made her point of argument, by saying that she hopes that when men talk to her, that they do not talk to her breasts but talk to her eyes. You would qualify to talk to her.

I think your statement about eye contact is a very good one.

[Bob S.]

The difference between staring and looking is that looking at someone usually will not result in their feeling uneasy. Staring at someone can lead to that uneasy feeling.

There is no time reference, it is the intention combined with the reaction.

Bob S.

It's difficult to know what is correct. Let me relate something that happened to me.

I was at a nudist club where I was a member. I was sitting by the pool just looking down at the ground. A quick movement on my left caused me to look that way. It was a woman who had shook her towel in the air--for what reason I don't know. She was on her knees with her butt staring me in the face when I looked up. As I looked up because of the movement that had caught my eye, she looked at me. Apparently, she thought I was staring at her butt. Personally, butts do nothing for me. I've often wondered if she didn't do that on purpose to get my attention.

Later, I saw her talking to someone and looking at me at the same time. I'm sure she was telling him that I had been staring at her butt which I wasn't. However, a quick movement catching my eye, eye contact with her at that moment, and there's a misunderstanding of why I was looking.

Just be careful. Bart has the right idea. It's the way I do it. A casual surveying of the whole scene without actually appearing to focus on anyone. I either look at the ground or floor, depending on where I am, or I keep my eyes moving and don't focus on anyone for more than an instant. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif /infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif

[luvnaturism]

It takes too much energy, and is unnatural, to only look at people's eyes. If we see a clothed person at a distance, we see the whole body. If we're closer - across the room - we still see the whole person. If the person is wearing a colorful belt, his/her jeans are torn, or socks don't match we'll probably notice it.

If we're sitting close together, perhaps for coffee or lunch, we'll still see everything above the tabletop. If our companion drops mustard on his/her front, we'll notice it.

The key for me is to just look at people who are not wearing clothes as I would look at them if they were dressed. Staring is rude in any circumstance, but seeing is not.

In a variation of this theme, when we first began to go to nude places my wife was extremely uncomfortable about where to look. Trying to see only eyes when those eyes were invariably supported by nude bodies made the whole experience stressful rather than relaxing. She's not the person who would ever stare, but she was afraid that people would think she was staring.

I suggested that she wear mirrored sunglasses so no one would know what her eyes were doing. It helped her to relax until she could get over her fear of being misunderstood. /infopop/emoticons/icon_razz.gif /infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Dark or mirrored sunglasses are a great idea .....protects your eyes from all those harmful rays too. /infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif

[David77]

Luvnaturism,
I may be wrong, but it was my impression that those who championed eye contact were not suggesting that we fix our gaze onto another persons eyes each and every time we look at them, but that we look into their eyes when we TALK to them. It would be most unnatural to stare at a person's eyes ALWAYS when seeing them. What a strain, pain, that would be!

I, and many people, feel a closer human contact (blessed communication with other humans) if we look (not stare) into their eyes when talking - whether nude or clothed.

If the person being "addressed" is a nude woman, she will appreciate the comfort afforded by not focusing on her other body parts during the conversation.

[luvnaturism]

My fault. I wasn't clear enough, and perhaps I was trying to do too much with one post.

The original post in this thread was asking for some help on "eye management" in a nude situation. A couple of the following posts contain a comment or suggestion about eye contact. One post mentions a situation where eye contact wasn't possible, because it was the other end of the person that was in view. I was trying to include them also.
I should have been more clear about what I was doing.

Direct eye contact is highly desireable when two parties are essentially facing each other, though eye contact 100% of the time isn't the norm. At some point it ceases being about openness and interest, and begins to be about challenge.

There are lots of casual situations where most of the conversation goes on without benefit of direct eye contact. If you're part of a group of six or eight, there will be some with whom you cannot maintain eye contact because the other person has their head turned away from you. If you're chatting with the person in the lounge chair beside you, you aren't going to constantly maintain eye contact. If I'm sitting down and someone stops in front of me, how am I not going to see the part of them that's at my eye level, whether they're dressed or not?

I was trying to say that the thing to do in a nude situation is the same as you do in a dressed situation: just follow your same visual patterns, and you'll come out fine. However, people who are worried about eye management might be helped to relax by hiding their eyes behind dark sunglasses.

In my wife's case, she had been trained since childhood that she shouldn't see another person's breasts or penis. Trying not to see them was causing her a lot of stress. Worrying that someone else would think that she was seeing them was causing her more stress. My logic that anyone who appears nude in a group is willing to be seen didn't help.

My view is that anyone who comes into a socially nude situation is aware that others will see them. I'm not blind. I see the whole person. If a breast or penis is there in my field of vision I'll see it. But I won't stare, I won't leer, and I won't fantasize sexually about it. Because I'm confortable with the whole thing, others seem to be comfortable with me.

So much of this is just being able to be relaxed yourself.

[David77]

Luvnaturism,
I certainly agree with you.

[Andrew_A]

In a nutshell, if a person does not want to be looked at for anything longer than a mere glance then they really shouldn't be nude in the first place. It brings the wrong attitude to their own body. If someone is staring at you like some whacked-out zombie, that's _their_ problem; there's no need to get complicated about things. Next thing you know, paranoia will arise over how much talk someone will (inevitably and inadvertently) overhear at any given moment. It's the nature of co-existence.

Andrew

[Im Naked, are You]

This all reminds me of one of the first times I went to a co beach, I was sitting next to a very attractive young couple, I admit that I wanted to get a better look, so I mustered up the courage to approach them and we proceeded to have a very nice chat regarding their dog that they had with them. This is the reason that I bring this story to the table, you see while my original plan was to get a "better look" the entire time that we chatted I never took my eyes off of their faces. Yes I do enjoy looking, but since that happened, I find I like talking and looking at the person the same way I would if I were to see them in the store or on the street. Pretty good eye opener for me and as a naturist I feel better about myself in that kind of situation. /infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif

[Xen]

Looking around the changing room at the gym I see three broad types of person (1) the ones who hate being naked around others, shower in their swimwear and wear a towel to change (2) those who don't mind being naked in the same sex changing room but who would never dream of being naked in, for example, the pool (3) those who are totally relaxed about being nude and would quite happily swim naked, go to the gym naked and go to the bar afterwards still totally bare.

The whole point of being naturist for me is that I actually enjoy being nude, in a nude environment. If people was to look at me that's fine - they look at me when I'm clothed, why shouldn't they when I'm naked.

Clearly staring is out, but it would be the same if I were dressed. As for looking at the bits that aren't normally on display, well so what ? The enjoyment of naturism is being completely naked and not having anything covered up, I'm quite relaxed if people (fellow naturists that is) want to look. It would only be an issue if some textiles came to a nude beach with the sole aim of looking and had no intention of stripping.

[galtboy]

permit me to add my two cents worth (and that's about all it is).
i consider naturist resorts alot like going to the beach in that you have to expect bodies to be on display. when i'm at a textile beach i freely admire the women in their bikinis or minimal suits of whatever style. but i don't stare, that's just as rude as fixating on someone's birthmark.
i also think it's common for you to be attracted to movement of any sort, and all sorts seem to be on display at c/o resorts.
buy the best rule of thumb i've heard is the three-second rule.

[FishNude]

STARING: well, I have been to public nude beaches as well as various naturist/CO resorts in Southern Califronia. I have NEVER experienced staring at a resort. However, at public nude beaches (Black's Beach in San Diego) staring can be quite annoying. I have it most often to be males, fully clothed gawking at women and at other men as well. This is definitely not welcome. It makes the ladies that venture to the beach feel uncomfortable, and would definitely keep them away in the future. I, and other beach goers, have asked these perverts to act decent and not stare. That is pretty much all that can be done. They go away ALL the time.

Stay Naked,