Brazzil
February 1999
Life StyleThe
Natural
LookClube Rincão, in the interior of São Paulo, has given a new impetus to the nudist cause. The naturist resort has recently been promoted in the mainstream press. It presents itself as a respectful and wholesome club only taking couples and families as members.
Émerson Luís
Despite its reputation as a place where anything goes sexually, Brazil sometimes can be as prudish and hypocritical as mainstream America. Case in point _ until ten years ago Brazil's 165 million people had but one place for those in the mood to bare it all in public: the Praia do Pinho, a beach on the littoral of Santa Catarina, a state in the south of Brazil.
The options for going disrobed have increased in the past few years to a couple dozen places, but they are still concentrated in the south where German and Italian colonization has created a more tolerant and European culture. Most of the these places are sea beaches (there are seven official nudist beaches) and some have already built a reputation for themselves including Tambaba, in the northern state of Paraíba and Pinho in the southern state of Santa Catarina. Created in 1988, the Pinho nudist beach was the first one of its kind in the country. In the Northeast, the most famous naturist site is Tambaba, a secluded beach in Conde, a little town in the state of Paraíba.
Tambaba is always full, with up to 1000 naked people on weekends. These sites were enriched more recently with inland nudist colonies in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and the Amazon. It is estimated that 60,000 Brazilians have embraced the no-clothes-is-our-clothes way of life. Compare this to 16 million nudists in Germany, for example. The growth has been by leaps and bounds recently. According to the Federação Brasileira de Naturismo (Brazilian Naturism Federation) the number of nudists has increased by 25% in the country last year.
Celso Rossi, director of the naturism magazine Naturis and co-owner of Colina do Sol—a naturist resort in the state of Rio Grande do Sul—commented about these changes in an interview with weekly newsmagazine Isto É: "This reflects a change that happened in the decade when naturists stopped being seen as an indecent assault and had their activity regulated."
A five-year-old nudist place, the Clube Rincão in Guaratinguetá in the interior of São Paulo, which uses what used to be a cattle ranch, has given a new impetus to the nudist cause. The naturist resort, with 100 families as members, has recently been promoted in the mainstream press. It presents itself as respectful and wholesome only taking couples and families as members.
The Rincão nudist club is the brainchild of Alexandre Tsanaclis, 50, a physician who has been a nudist since his late twenties. He is also the president of the three-thousand-member Federação Brasileira de Naturismo and explains the purpose of his club: "Here we have a space for those who are bothered by the compulsive use of clothes, by this hypocrisy of wearing a bikini, a skimpy swim suit."
In the state of Goiás, the Goiasnat, the state's only nudist club conceived two years ago in Bela Vista, is thriving. With 112 members the Goiasnat was created by Jodenon Borges de Sousa on his own farm. Sousa, who raises his small children in the club, doesn't forget all the opposition from his own friends and family when he started the club. The mother argued that this practice wasn't something approved by God. His answer: "If God wanted otherwise, everybody would be born dressed."
The couple Marcos Juliano de Oliveira Pinto and Sheyla Gonçalves Pinto also bring their three children to the Goiasnat. They have two boys who are 5 and 7 years old and a girl who is 4. "They love the place," Sheyla said in an interview with Goiás daily Diário da Manhã. "When we say we are going to the club they take their clothes off in the car."
There are several sites dedicated to Brazilian naturism on the Internet. One of the more complete, with links to several other sites, is the NaturisNet ( http://www.naturis.com.br/ ), which publishes the magazine Naturis and houses the homepage for the FBN (Federação Brasileira de Naturismo). http://www.naturis.com.br/fbnet/fbn01.htm . Created in January of 1988, the FBN is responsible for coordinating the naturism movement in Brazil.
More links to several naturist sites in Brazil can be found at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/6690/naturisites.htm , http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/1328/natbm.htm and http://www.naturis.com.br/fbnet/fbnasscl.htm
