I’m at the bar (naked) buying a cheap carafe of French rosé when my friend Rebecca* stands up (also naked), waves her arms to get my attention, and yells at me to please get some olives too. Amy,* with her two-year-old daughter grinning in her lap, gives me a naked thumbs up. My partner, Andrea*, is chatting away in French with a new friend we made the night before at the beach bar (and yep, they’re both naked). We’re sitting in the central square at CHM Montalivet, Europe’s oldest and largest naturist settlement, which has been existing quietly on the Atlantic coast of France for more than 70 years. The easiest way to explain it is to say it’s a town, but naked. A naked town.
There are seven bars and six restaurants to choose from, but this place in the central square is our favorite. Wooden chairs and tables are strewn casually about, the carafes of (pretty good) wine cost seven euros and the staff are mostly handsome, surfer-looking guys with longish hair and tattoos. A DJ plays old school rock and colorful festoon lighting is strung between the trees. We’re also surrounded by a wine shop, two small supermarkets, a bookshop, a bike shop, a hairdresser, a boutique selling trinkets like candles and jewelry, and a hardware store. There are over a thousand private bungalows on the site—some home to full-time residents, some vacation homes owned by families who have been coming here for generations, and others rented out in the summer to visitors like us. It’s all set in a huge pine forest, with a mile-long stretch of beach on one side and fencing around the perimeter (because, you know, of the nakedness).
My partners and I (I’m in a throuple, ICYMI) have been coming here every year, for several years. I convinced my girlfriends to come for the first time in 2019 and they too wound up wanting to come back every year since. I never thought I’d be the kind of person to take the same vacay over and over, but I swear there’s nowhere like this on earth. This year, it was two whole weeks of drinking wine (naked), lying on the beach (naked), eating moules marinières, (naked—you know what, for the remainder of this article, assume we are naked unless told otherwise), swimming, riding bikes through the trees, drinking beer at the beach bar, dancing to live bands in the evening, and attending morning yoga classes—just me, my partners, two of my oldest friends, and a sunscreen-slathered two-year-old in naturist paradise.
Yes, obviously soaking up some fun in the sun with friends and loved ones is what vacation is all about. But what makes doing those things naked so uniquely enjoyable is, honestly, how safe we feel here. There are plenty of reasons to love this place (the wine, the food, the sunset over the beach, the smell of the pines), but what keeps us coming back is actually a lack of something—a lack of threat, a lack of self-consciousness, a lack of fear: not feeling like you need to be on guard. Sitting naked, drinking our wine at the bar in the center of town, I ask my friends if they feel this way too.
“I couldn’t put my finger on it at first,” says Rebecca. “But it’s the lack of the male gaze. You start to notice it like a lightness, like there’s been a weight taken off your shoulders.”
“I just like that I can tan my tits,” says Andrea. “No, seriously though, it’s a very freeing place to be. It’s sad though, isn’t it, that just feeling safe is somehow freeing?”
She’s right though—it feels great to feel so safe, so constantly unbothered. We have never been harassed, or even looked at in an uncomfortable way. Not once. You walk around with it all hanging out, and when someone (read: a man) speaks to you, they speak to your face. Nobody comments on your body. Nobody stares at you. Catcalling would be unthinkable.
All kinds of people come here, flaunting a huge range of ages and body types. Nobody is posturing, nobody is judging anybody else. You can just be, and there’s a unique kind of freedom in that. When you’ve seen literally a thousand different naked people in a day, trust me, you start to feel way less concerned about whether your boobs, your labia, your pubes, your cellulite, your freckles, your whatever-other-hangup, is normal. Because you can see, very clearly, that it absolutely is.
In naturism, nakedness is natural (the clue’s in the name). It’s also separated from anything sexual. In fact, that’s kind of the whole point—that being naked isn’t inherently sexual. Our bodies are just bodies. FYI, naturism is different from nudism, and it’s an important distinction. Nudism has a more voyeuristic side, and nudist resorts (there are plenty of these in France too, as well as all around the world) tend to cater more to swinger communities and vacation-goers looking for hookups. And no judgment—that’s all fine too! And I’m not saying nudist resorts aren’t safe (they are). But my girlfriends and I like how chill things are here, where the sexualization that tends to follow nudity—and female bodies in any state of dress, for that matter—is miraculously non-existent. Ever been to a gay bar so you can dance without dudes hitting on you? Kinda the same vibe—but I’ll take an ice-cold white wine, a sunset, and a deep chat with my girls over a sweaty club night any day, thanks.
Also, yes, some of my girlfriends have kids now. CHM Montalivet is really family friendly, but some people back in our everyday lives have a hard time understanding that. They think it’s super weird that we’d take kids somewhere where everyone is naked. But I’ll say it again: It’s not a sexual thing. Just as my friends and I have never encountered guys here being creepy towards us as adult women, my friends who are mothers have never felt that their children aren’t safe here. Not once. That shit just wouldn’t fly—it would get called out so quickly and perpetrators would be ejected and banned. Yes, there are security measures (when you visit for the first time your name and address are taken and verified with ID, there are employees trained in safeguarding stationed around the place and everyone has to carry a pass with their name and photograph on it), but the people who come here just get it. Everyone is on the same wavelength and the feeling of safety comes, in large part, from that self-selection; you feel like a member of a community where everyone is looking out for everyone else.
Still, I know what you’re thinking: isn’t it weird being naked? Honestly, no. Context is huge here, and in this environment, nakedness genuinely starts to feel normal. So normal that you even forget about it. One year, we saw an elderly man cycle out the front gates in his birthday suit, followed by a panicked security guy flapping his arms and yelling, “Monsieur! Monsieur!” And honestly, it could have been me. We only think of nakedness as shocking or uncomfortable in everyday life because it’s so unusual. Here, you’re naked more often than not, so it kinda loses its edge.
It’s worth pointing out that you’re not necessarily naked all the time, though. At night it can get chilly; it’s fine to put something on if you’re cold. Likewise, after a day on the beach, you might want to cover up against the sun (especially if you’re a pasty-ass sunburn magnet like me). That’s fine too. It’s not a case of militantly-enforced nudity. Clothes are practical sometimes! But on a beach, I can say this with absolute certainty, clothes are sensory hell. Once you’ve been to a beach naked, with no bikini to get sand all caught up in, you’ll never go back. (Plus the tan is seamless.)
Also, being naked is just super relaxing! After a while, clothes start to feel like boring life admin. Want to go for a swim and then straight for lunch? No problem. You can leave the pool and walk to the restaurant. No messing around with a wet swimsuit or struggling to operate a dodgy changing-room blow dryer. We leave our phones in the chalet most days—no pants = no pockets, which = no excuse to be checking work emails on vacay. My girlfriends and I are self-made career women, some of us are mothers too, we’ve got a lot of shit going on back home. But here, you strip it all off with your clothes. Have you ever taken your pants off when you get home from a hard day? It’s like that, but the ultimate version.
Leaving, of course, is tough. We wait until the last minute to put our bras back on. And no, back home, we don’t tend to hang out together naked. Again, it’s about context. But one thing we definitely do try to bring back with us is that feeling of freedom. That lack of self-consciousness. If it can exist in that community in France, couldn’t it exist anywhere? A world where women aren’t objectified. Where we can be butt naked and still treated with respect. Wild, huh? Sadly, for now, that doesn’t exist everywhere. In fact, it hardly exists anywhere. It’s a rare thing. And that’s why, each year on our way out, we go to reception and re-book for next summer.
*Name has been changed.
