Au Naturel: Naturism, Nudism, and Tourism in Twentieth-Century France

5. Creating Cap d’Agde: The “Naked City” and Sex Tourism

5 Creating Cap d’Agde The “Naked City” and Sex Tourism In the summer of 1975, Pierre Morganti, the mayor of Ogliastro, a village near the Corsican city of Bastia, mobilized several anti-nudist militants to slather blue paint on the exposed bodies of fifteen nudists (presumably so that once police arrived they had proof that nudists had violated Article 330). “They are invading us,” claimed the Corsican.1 In the wake of this widely reported incident , the regional newspaper Midi libre decided, in obvious jest, to interview a host of mayors along the southwestern French coast of Languedoc-Roussillon to learn if those mayors would consider similar means against nudists caught on beaches not designated as nudist. The newspaper was careful to include Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, mayor of Agde, where the new tourist center of Cap d’Agde had a “naturist village.” Evading the precise question asked, what he would do to nudists caught on beaches NOT designated nudist, in favor of putting in a plug for the tolerance in his hometown, Mayor Leroy-Beaulieu pointed out that, due to a municipal decree of 1973, “In our opinion, naturism is perfectly legitimate. It is regulated at the Cap d’Agde in such a way as to completely guarantee the liberty of mores [la liberté des moeurs]. As for the naturists whose presence is being discussed in Corsica, we would be very happy to welcome them to the Cap.”2 At Cap d’Agde, where the municipality has had a more direct role in the regulation of public nudity than anywhere in France, the mayor confidently welcomed yet more nudists to vacation there. In the process, with his promise to guarantee the “liberty of mores,” a unique expression characterized by double entendre in French as well as in the English translation, Mayor Leroy-Beaulieu also captured some of the ambiguities that characterized nudism in France as its practice became widespread. Although Cap d’Agde began, like many other nudist sites, as a small campground , it quickly came to be, and to represent, much more. When the Fifth Republic’s technocrats launched a huge initiative to develop the southwestern 164 Au Naturel coast of France, nude campgrounds stood in the way. De Gaulle’s center-right regime had not initially intended to foster the development of nude tourism along the coast of Languedoc, but desire to increase the number of well-heeled foreigners vacationing at the Cap d’Agde proved impossible to refuse. Soon multi-storied apartment blocks and shopping centers for nude tourists found their way into the development scheme. In the process, not only the municipality but the French national government itself fostered nude tourism. As Cap d’Agde and the Department of the Hérault. Creating Cap d’Agde 165 Mayor Leroy-Beaulieu made clear, all nudists were welcome at the Cap, where there would be no need for the nudist games of cat-and-mouse with authorities played first on the Île du Levant, then near Saint-Tropez and other localities on the coast, including Corsica. Coincidentally, the practice of nudism itself was changing. Along with the other, smaller centers founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cap d’Agde revealed just how widespread and how socially acceptable nudism was becoming in France. But with numbers came an increasingly wide range of assumptions about what public nudity was all about. The FFN lost effective control over what naturisme meant, even if its definition had been limited simply to “nudism” for many if not most practitioners after World War II. Now some of those practicing nudism at Cap d’Agde embraced exhibitionism, voyeurism, group sex, partner-swapping, and public sex on the beach and in the nearby dunes. Cap d’Agde accommodated what Mayor Leroy-Beaulieu memorably dubbed the “liberty of mores” in Europe and as exercised in the new quartier naturiste. Demand, which brought with it profits for local business, income for proprietors of apartments in the quartier naturiste, and revenue for the municipality, clearly drove the development and growth of Cap d’Agde. And as that demand changed in nature, eventually including a quite strong desire on the part of some to explore openly sexual practices long hidden by nudists and society at large, Cap d’Agde reflected that shift. Cap d’Agde became Europe’s best-known destination for sex tourism.3 establishing nude tourism at cap d...