A Life in a Year – 4th June, Naturism and Health and Efficiency Magazine

When I was a boy there used to be a top shelf magazine called ‘Health and Efficiency’ which showcased people who were committed to naturism and as spotty adolescents with hormones in overdrive, it was always a thrill to come across a discarded copy of this magazine.  It wasn’t the pursuit of naturism that attracted us of course because we were only really interested in seeing pictures of ladies bare breasts.

The magazine was first published as long ago as 4^th June 1900 (only six months after Queen Victoria, who probably wouldn’t approved of that sort of thing had died) and I remember now that the photographs were usually of people doing ordinary everyday things but completely naked.

 

Some of these activities were completely inappropriate because I am talking about the sort of things that sensible people usually wear their clothes to do, mowing the lawn, driving a tractor, going to the supermarket and playing sports for example.  Honestly, there were often pictures of people shopping at the supermarket, and let’s be honest you don’t see that sort of thing every day at Tesco where would you keep your wallet for a start and you wouldn’t want to spend too long at the freezer section because of the danger of frostbite in a very delicate area.  Then there were the happy looking people cooking sausages on a barbeque and you would certainly need your wits about you to do that and avoid serious misfortune and permanent genital damage.

You can still buy the magazine but it isn’t top shelf any more and I’ve had a look and you can get it on-line as well.  Health and Efficiency.

Here are a couple of questions I’d really like the answer to?  Why don’t super models take all their clothes off and sunbathe naturally and what makes people with brains in denial and bodies desperately defying gravity, remove their clothes and proudly show everything off.  Once on a beach in Naxos, Greece I came across the worst naturist beach that I have ever found,  I have never seen so much pubic untidiness, it was as though they had a couple of ounces of Old Holborn tobacco stuck in their groin!

Actually that was a good thing about Health and Efficiency because there were never any untidy pubic hairs on show because until the mid 1970s this was strictly censored in British publishing.  In retrospect, the most striking thing about the models’ anatomy was that they were completely without pubic hair, or, for that matter, any other details associated with the genital area of the body.  They were as blank as an ancient Greek, marble statue in that department, and in pre computer photo editing days this was achieved by skilful use of an ‘air-brush’ applied directly to the photo before publication.  Bottoms however were ok it seems…

It looks as though the grass would benefit from the same treatment as the pubes!