Bertie

So this is my first time posting on Naktiv. As a writer who has only recently discovered Naked Hiking Day, I was really curious about public attitudes towards nude hiking. So I decided to run a poll about public attitudes and thought it would be interesting to share the results here…

In May 2019 I polled 1,505 adult Americans through Google surveys with the following question (and multiple-choice answers displayed in a random order):

June 21st is “Naked Hiking Day”. Which of the following statements best describes your attitude towards naked hiking:

1. It’s fine, I have no problem with it
2. It should only be allowed in specific places
3. It shouldn’t be allowed anywhere
4. It sounds fun!

Here’s the result:

The first thing I noticed was, although the least popular option, nearly 15% of Americans think naked hiking sounds fun. That equates to 35 million people! Great news!

On the flip side, nearly 25% of people think it shouldn’t be allowed anywhere. When I broke that down by demography, there wasn’t much difference based on Gender. The Midwest and the South were more inclined to ban the activity than the North East and the West. Age, however, was a huge factor… If you were over 65, you were twice as likely to feel this way (35%) compared to 18-24 year olds (18%).

Although 25% of the population seem outright against naked hiking, that means that 75% are at least relatively accepting of it, which seems really positive. This aligns fairly closely with the regular polling conducted on behalf of the Naturist Education Foundation which consistently finds strong support among Americans for those wishing to pursue “clothing optional” activities. 

And while I’m certain we won’t see 35m bare bodies on the trail any time soon, it’s quite interesting to see relatively high levels of tolerance in a socio-political landscape that seems increasingly divided.

This is adapted from a longer article which you can read in full here.