What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada

What Nudism Exposes offers an original perspective on postwar Canada by situating the nudist movement within the broader social and cultural context and considering how nudist clubs navigated changing times. As the nudist movement took root in Canada after the Second World War, its adherents advanced the idea that going nude and looking at the bodies of others satisfied natural curiosity, loosened the hold of social taboos, and encouraged mental health. By the 1970s, nudists switched their focus to promoting the pleasurable aspects of their practice. Mary-Ann Shantz contends that throughout the postwar decades, nudists sought social approval as they engaged with contemporary concerns about childrearing, pornography, and public nudity. This book explains the perspectives of the movement while questioning its assumptions, arguing that what nudism ultimately exposes is how the body figures at the intersection of nature and culture, the individual and the social, the private and the public.