Nude Swimming - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Arts

Nude swimming was a common subject of Old Masters (painters from before the 1800s) and Romantic oil paintings, usually bucolic or in a mythological or historical settings. For example, Swedish painters Georg Pauli and Anders Zorn painted a number of nude swimming scenes. In later periods depictions of nude swimming scenes became rarer, but more likely to depict straightforward contemporary scenes. The cover of the June 4, 1921 edition of the Saturday Evening Post had Norman Rockwell's painting No Swimming, depicting boys in various states of undress escaping from the local authorities.

Films

Several films have become notable in whole or in part due to their nude swimming scenes.

• Ecstasy (1933) was banned in many places and censored in others. The film included a nude swimming scene with Hedy Lamarr.
• Tarzan and His Mate (1934) featured the female lead (played by a double) swimming nude. However, religious groups lobbied to have the scene removed. Three versions of this movie now exist.
• In Age of Consent, a 1969 Australian film by British director Michael Powell, Helen Mirren swims naked in several scenes.
• Walkabout, a 1971 Australian/British film directed by Nicolas Roeg, shows actress Jenny Agutter and actors David Gulpilil and Luc Roeg swimming nude. The nude swimming scenes are set in several water holes in the Australian outback, during an extended time disconnected from civilization.
• Jaws (1975), the character Chrissie Watkins, played by Susan Backlinie, goes skinny dipping in the ocean, and then gets eaten by the shark. Susan Backlinie later reprised the scene in a self-parody in the comedy 1941 (1979), where she is snagged up by the periscope of a surfacing Japanese submarine.
• The Blue Lagoon, a 1980 Randal Kleiser film starring Brooke Shields, shows nude swimming scenes – shot in Champagne Bay, Vanuatu. Because Brooke Shields was 15 years old at the time, she was replaced for these nude scenes by her body double, Kathy Troutt.
• Paradise, a 1982 Canadian film directed by Stuart Gillard, shows actress Phoebe Cates swimming nude. Most of the scenes were shot underwater, in both the Dead Sea and the Sea of Gallilee, in Israel.
• Sirens, a 1994 Australian/British film directed by John Duigan, shows actress's Elle Macpherson, Portia de Rossi, Tara Fitzgerald and Kate Fischer swimming nude. The nude swimming is sent in an artists country property in the Blue Mountains in Australia and highlights the clash of sensabililities held by the main characters.

Television

• In 2009, Eve Kelly hosted The Skinny Dip, a Canadian travel show that sought out the world's most out-of-the-way swimming holes.

Books

• Kate Rew and Daniel Start have recently published a book promoting skinny dipping, recommending suitably secluded beaches, rivers and lakes.