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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Nude teen camps
too much fun
for their own goodApparently the hot thing to do this year is send your teen off to a nude summer camp. At least it seems that way with nude summer camps getting so much press attention lately.
With all the trouble in the world, it's great that we Americans can still find something silly to argue about. I doubt if nude summer camps are the subjects of conversation in Saudi Arabia or Yemen. Or even nude terrorist camps, for that matter. Getting naked isn't a high priority for most of the world. That's too bad. The world would be a safer place if everyone walked around naked. It would be tough to be a suicide bomber under those conditions. ("Is that a stick of dynamite you got there, Abdul, or are you just happy to see me?")
Even living within the "elevated" terror danger level (or is chartreuse "high" level?) Americans can find time to take their clothes off. (If the threat of terror keeps you from being buck naked in public, then the terrorists have won.) But not only are adults getting naked these days, so are their children.
Nude summer camps for teens have sprung up from Arizona to Florida. I don't know of any nude camps for kids in Hawaii, but our state generally isn't far behind on picking up weird ideas.
FOR THE RECORD, I'm against nude summer camps for teens. And not on some goofy religious or moral grounds. I'm against anything that allows kids today to have more fun than I did when I was their age.
Parents of the teens being sent off to nude camp think it helps their kids learn to "be OK" with their bodies. Why they want their kids to "be OK" with their bodies, I don't know. Personally, I want my 15-year-old daughter to "be OK" with algebra and chemistry. As far as I'm concerned, she can come to grips with her body after she gets out of college. As long as I'm paying the bills, the only camp I'm sending her to is the Fully Clad Future Ph.D. Camp. Or the Learn How to Get Rich So You Can Support Your Father in His Old Age Camp.
I don't care how nonchalant a teenage boy acts when he is told by his parent that they are sending him to a nude summer camp. He may say he welcomes the opportunity to become one with nature and learn that the human body is nothing to be ashamed of, but the only reason he's going to camp is to look at naked girls. When I was 16, I would have killed to be able to go a summer camp with naked girls. Hell, we would have been happy to go to a camp with any girls at all. Our imaginations were so honed, we would have had a jolly time if all the chicks were wearing Arab burqas, with nothing but their eyes showing.
The point is that parents who send their teens to nude camp are kidding themselves if they think the youngsters are going to be thinking of anything other than ogling each other. It's not the kids' fault. At that age, hormones have commandeered the bridge and taken over the human vessel. The brain is no longer at the helm. Under those conditions, a simple game of volleyball could degenerate into an orgy of Caligulan proportions. Camp counselors would have to use cattle prods to break the scrum apart.
It's one thing to "be OK" with your body and another to be "stoked beyond belief."
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Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com