Nothing wrong with public nudity in Brattleboro Vermont. Here on the banks of the Connecticut River, in the busiest parking area of a downtown peppered with bookstores and coffee shops, more is meeting the eye than some people want. Spurred by complaints, the town’s Select Board will consider changing that, although no changes are expected soon. In the meantime, some pedestrians avert their eyes. Some youths cheer on their naked friends, and a few adults are so offended that they become nearly hysterical.
A politely rebellious collection of teenagers passing time in the Harmony Parking Lot this summer has taken to disrobing. Seemingly on a whim, they shed clothes and soak up the sun, nude.
What began as a lark or an ode to youthful exuberance has now turned into a municipal quandary, because public nudity is permissible in Brattleboro.
In the words of Town Manager Jerry Remillard, if you’re naked in public, and you’re minding your business, you’re legal.
“We’re quite a bit different than a lot of places,” Remillard said.
If the two-dozen or so youths, 16 to 19 years old, are seeking to make a social statement, the manifesto needs some work.
“We just thought it’d be a little fun,” said Charles Corry, 19, who said he stripped to nature’s own Friday and hung out for about 45 minutes with five like-minded friends as shoppers, diners, and walkers made their bemused way through the lot. “I don’t see it as a serious statement.”
Serious or not, the teenagers have made nudity something that can show its pale or sun-burned self with no warning. Rachel Brooks, who works at Everyone’s Books, sees some of the action on the sidewalk outside the shop’s rear door.
“Personally, if I wanted to be naked, I wouldn’t sit around in a dirty parking lot,” said Brooks, 22. “I wouldn’t want to get cigarette butts on my butt.”
The nudity began in earnest this year, Brooks said, when one young woman decided she wanted to bare her chest in public, just like her male friends.
Since then, the no-clothes fashion has gained popularity and has expanded to include group bike rides, skateboarding, hula-hoop contests, and a grass-roots music event that the group dubbed the Brat Fest.
One girl even sat partially nude on a newspaper vending box in the middle of downtown. I could see her boobs and stomach easily wherever I walked in the park.
“I think most of Vermont wants Vermont to be nude,” said Hannah Phillips, 15, who added that she has not disrobed. “People have a basic human right to be naked if they want to.”
Nearby, older teenagers sat on the sidewalk, fully clothed, their backs propped against a brick wall, munching on a pizza they found in its box. A car belonging to one of the group was parked nearby, a skull-and-crossbones on its hood and the words, “Chaos Infiltration Squad,” on a side door. On the opposite side of the lot, the Back Side Cafe looked down on the scene.
Although members of the group said they don’t intend to offend anyone, one woman has filed a complaint with the Select Board.
But the wheels of legislation grind methodically here, and the board must hold two public meetings, followed by a waiting period of nearly a month before a ban on public nudity can be implemented and enforced.
Vermont does not forbid public nudity, as Massachusetts does, but some liberal communities in the state have banned it. Remillard said that outsiders should not begin to think of Brattleboro as a haven for the behavior. It’s just that Brattleboro never had cause to ban nudity before.
“I would suspect that if it were OK, you’d see it in Boston,” he said.
Andrew Wdowiak, who works at Everyone’s Books, said that he’s not put off by the nudity, but that the act has become a little tired. “I think it was more for the shock value,” he said. “They weren’t flagrant about it.”
But last week, when about a half-dozen naked teenagers congregated outside the store, “it was like they were baking a cake, and they really frosted it,” Wdowiak said. “All the men were naked, and the women were topless. I needed about three drinks to erase that vision.”
One patron of the bookstore let loose with hysterics of Academy Award proportions, he added.
If the town passes an ordinance this year, cool weather will have begun to settle in this slice of the North Country.
But Remillard, for one, doesn’t think the bracing air will accomplish what Brattleboro’s laws have been so far unable to do.
“That isn’t necessarily going to bother this group of people,” he said of the cold.
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February 24th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
On 10/4/2006, at 5:50 pm, Ed Gillette wrote:
Quote:
I see (ahem) little reason to be upset by nudity in public.
I agree. We have American soldiers dying everyday in Iraq, and a few outspoken whiners are more concerned with a group of teenagers congregating in the buff in a downtown parking lot? Talk about misplaced priorities!
Mr. Gillette goes on to say the following:
Victorian approaches to all things sexual has likely created
many more problems than has nudity.
However, UGLY is a real problem that should be concealed with all the diligence of a modern day elephant man. It is a known fact that exposure to too much ugliness causes nightmares in small children and psychoses in adults. Show me a cute breast any day!
Again, I agree with you, but only up to a point. It’s certainly true that the laws of this country as well as the attitudes of the citizens need to change before nudism becomes more widely accepted by society as a whole. Nudism isn’t about sex at all.
As to your comment on ugly people, not all of us look like or have supermodel-style bodies. Nudism is about being comfortable in your own skin, and not being concerned with what others may think. Most nudists don’t care what you look like on the outside, but how you are as a person.
James
February 1st, 2008 at 2:00 am
Who do you think you are? This is not your country! It is the country of the people. Everyone has their rights as an American citizen, including a person’s freedom of speach to be naked. If you think a nude body is porn, you are insane! The human body is the most beautiful thing in the universe that God has created.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 am
wow where did you move to I won’t to move there
December 27th, 2007 at 2:19 am
I just read on the message board of the site Naked in Brattleboro, Vermont that on December 4, 2007, the Brattleboro Selectboard passed, by a 4-1 vote, an anti-nudity ordinance that effectively prohibits both skinny dipping and nude sunbathing within the city limits of Brattleboro. Violators would be subject to a $100 fine. Brattleboro is now the eighth city in Vermont to ban public nudity.
This sucks. Yet another piece of personal freedom goes down the drain, thanks to a few loud whiners crying over spilled milk.
James
December 21st, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Streaking is one of many things that loses it’s power to shock and titilate in a relaxed and non-puritanical society.By all means,get yer streak on!In Brattlesboro,they’re proving it wont kill a person!
December 20th, 2007 at 2:14 am
M, you’re mostly right. A relaxed and civilized attitude in general leads to a lower number of sex crimes. However, it looks to me like people are just using this for an opportunity to go streaking.
December 17th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Are these kids crazy?A relaxed and civilised attitude toward the human body in a society leads to less violent and sex-related crimes,less incest,bad perversions,infidelities.All this has been proven!Isn’t downtown Brattlesboro boring enough?What are they thinking?!?
December 12th, 2007 at 3:54 am
“The problem is that it creates a situation the encourages much more serious crimes.”, writes Chern.
Well, according to the same logic, wearing clothes should also be forbidden. If noone wore clothes, it would be far more difficult to shoplift. It would also be more difficult to get guns unnoticed into a bank to rob it. And it would be terribly difficult to smuggle weapons into airplanes to hijack them.
On balance, I believe wearing clothes creates more dangerous situations than being nude. Luckily for people who insist on wearing clothes all the time, nudists will not ban clothing any time soon…
December 12th, 2007 at 2:15 am
40
Chem Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
I like naked girls as much as the next guy. But the problem here is not that someone will be inconvenienced by having to see someone naked. The problem is that it creates a situation the encourages much more serious crimes.
Chem,
That’s true to a certain extent because there will probably always be a few rotten apples in the basket who want to spoil it for everyone, but this alone should not be enough to ban public nudity entirely.
I do agree with you that I also like to see naked women as much as the next guy, but banning public nudity solely on the basis of the argument that “it creates a situation that encourages much more serious crimes” is simply not convincing enough, IMO.
As I see it, this issue isn’t even about whether simply being naked in public leads to more serious sex-related crimes at all. To me it’s about whether or not a community
has the right to ban a particular behavior simply on the basis that a small group of individuals somehow has the right to decide for everyone else what is and what is not acceptable because they’re somehow offended by the behavior in question.
Just my two cents worth.
James