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3 Saving the Île du Levant International Nudism and Municipal Development In the 15 October 1952 edition of La France, journalist Henry-Marie Vidal reported that “the delights of Héliopolis, like [Al] Capone, are now known throughout the world. In the summer that just ended, 30,000 nudists peopled the island [of Levant] that was once so quiet. They spoke all languages, and particularly German. . . . Economists confirm that the Île du Levant, where precious currencies converge, can greatly aid the recovery of the franc.”1 Although many of Vidal’s readers had already heard of nudism on the island, what made the journalist prescient was that he very clearly understood the role of nude tourism for economic development, an observation that would be made repeatedly—first by the municipality of Hyères-les-Palmiers, later by other municipalities on the French coast, and ultimately by the French state itself. Implicitly, Vidal recognized the two driving forces of nude tourism to France in the postwar years. First, an emerging international nudist subculture developed as unprecedented numbers of Europeans created demand for nude vacations. Northern European tourists brought foreign currency as well as expectations for what they should not have to wear while basking in the sun, water, and sea air. In the late 1940s, northern Europeans had no other real options for collective and public beachfront nudism in a warm climate, and their desire for nude tourism led them to France. Despite growing demand, nudism was strictly prohibited in Italy and Greece, as it was in Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal.2 Nudism was increasingly common in West Germany, but the North Sea was cold. Within France, there were not yet any alternatives to the Île du Levant. German-financed development of nudist centers on the Yugoslavian coast had not yet begun. Demand—like municipal initiative—was critical in the expansion and configuration of nudist tourist options, and it 88 Au Naturel was channeled first to Hyères and ultimately to French coasts more generally. Second, in the absence of any French national policy whatsoever, individual French municipalities took the initiative. Beginning with Hyères, coastal municipalities tolerated and ultimately even coveted nude tourism as a means of economic development. Not until the state-sponsored Gaullist redevelopment of the coasts of Languedoc-Roussillon and Aquitaine in the 1960s and 1970s did the French national government take interest in nudism as a means of fostering tourism.3 In the meantime, the demand for nude tourism determined events on the ground at the Île du Levant, fostering both the development of international nudism and the municipality of Hyères’s accommodation of it. The years after World War II were a watershed for naturism and nudism in France. In the postwar years, the practice of nudism largely overtook the elaborate health claims of interwar naturists. The complicated ideological justifications of both the Durville brothers and Marcel Kienné de Mongeot increasingly gave way to the actions of individual nudists at nudist destinations . Arguments in favor of nudism did not change, but they became less important than notions of individual liberty. Nudist publications flourished, but their articles became shorter as photographs became more numerous as well as more revealing, and ideas took a back seat to more practical information about nudist sites. As nudity and near-nudity became increasingly widespread on French beaches, nudists felt much less compelled to justify their actions. Here they no doubt profited from the much broader shift in sartorial norms. Swim trunks for men and two-piece bathing suits for women were already becoming increasingly popular on French beaches before World War II, as evidenced by the profusion of new municipal regulations first against them and then accommodating them in attempts to stem the tide bringing in even more revealing swimwear.4 After the war, women along the French coast increasingly donned apparel originally acceptable only on the interwar Île du Levant. Bikinis, named for the American nuclear tests in the Bikini islands, barely clothed bathing bombshells. In isolated locales along the Riviera, topless bathing increasingly became acceptable among some women. Men began to don brief slips at the beach.5 While nudists on the Île du Levant would remain at one extreme, ogled at by boatloads of tourists from Nice and Cannes who did not dare to take it all off but sometimes took most of it off, they were on a continuum. After all, what could make a very revealing slip...

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