Felicity Jones. (Photo courtesy of Young Naturists and Young Nudists America)



In many ways, 27-year-old Felicity Jones is your average millennial woman.



She grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey with three siblings. She’s on pretty much every social media platform possible (hi there, Felicity on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr), where she describes herself as “your crunchy, quirky friend.” She’s an avid reader, a vegetarian who loves nature and baking, and a self-proclaimed feminist with a full-time job, love of travel, and commitment to the environment. But she’s also a third-generation nudist and co-founder of Young Naturists and Young Nudists America (YNA), an organization that advocates for the tolerance and acceptance of naturism, non-sexual social nudity, positive body image, and censorship prevention.



(Never heard of “naturism”? The term is essentially interchangeable with nudism, though it can be used to more specifically describe someone who enjoys being nude while in a natural setting, as opposed to all of the time.)

“It’s a common misconception that the only people who practice naturism are older retired people, and that’s just not true,” Jones tells Yahoo Health. When asked to think of nudists, many will think of people in their older age who have just decided that they no longer care about societal protocol and want to be naked, decades of body shaming past be d*mned. But it’s not all Kathy Bates in About Schmidt. “There are a lot of younger people, a lot of families,” Jones explains, and as the “young” part of her organization’s name implies, the majority of YNA event attendees are indeed in their 20s and 30s (though the organization itself has no official age limit).

Jones herself has been a practicing naturist as long as she can remember, and grew up visiting the Rock Lodge Club, a family-oriented nudist club in northern New Jersey, almost every summer weekend. “I loved growing up there. It’s just a great place to be a kid, with a lake surrounded by woods and nature trails and tennis courts and volleyball and I could just be free and run around,” she says. “Kid are natural nudists; you give them a chance to run around naked and they’ll take it.”

At home during the week, Jones and her family were like any other suburban household. “My dad was very much raised to be an outdoor nudist, where you only go naked at the club,” she explains. “We didn’t really go naked at home very much, and we always had people over. None of our friends [outside the club] were nudists, so it just made sense that we would keep our clothes on when people came over. It’s not like my parents tried to cover up quickly if they were naked and we came in the room, but they didn’t sit around naked at home watching TV or anything like that.”

Related: 5 Scientific Reasons To Sleep Butt Naked



Born into a naturist family, Jones readily admits that nudism was not necessarily a lifestyle choice that she consciously adopted for herself. But now, as an independent adult who wholeheartedly embraces the practice, she is able to appreciate the wonders it did — and still does — for her sense of self. “I had a lot less anxiety about my own body growing up because I knew what people really looked like. I knew what my body was going to look like,” she explains. “I could see what someone looked like anywhere from the age of infancy to the age of 99, and I grew up in this environment where people didn’t pay so much attention to what people look like on the outside.” And considering that Yahoo Health’s recent survey on body image revealed that on average, it takes women half their lives to achieve just half the level of body self-esteem as the average teenage male, the potential benefits of this early exposure to real bodies of all shapes and sizes are numerous.

“Naturism counters the body shame that so many people grow up with,” says Jones. “From a young age, people are taught to be ashamed and to make their bodies meet a certain set of standards. But in a naturist environment, when you’re surrounded by people who all look so different from you, it’s easy to lose track of what society tells you you’re supposed to look like. You realize that nobody’s perfect, people really do come in all shapes and sizes, and it makes you in turn feel more comfortable about yourself.”