Rising price of nudity

Press, 22 August 1979, Page 16

Rising price of nudity

From the “Economist,” London

Nudism has become big business on France s beaches. No sooner has a holidaymaker taken off his or her clothes than a nude real estate salesman appears offering flats and houses. Nudism is growing at least 20 per cent a year. Complete nudist towns and villages have been built along the Languedoc Roussillon coastline between Marseilles and the Spanish border. The summer population at one of the biggest. Heliopolis, on Cap D’Agde, is ntore

than 25,000. Cafe terraces are crammed with nude bodies; shopping centres bustle with nude couples pushing their trolleys. One-room flats in Heliopolis cost around $35,000; two rooms around $50,000. Purchasers are asked to send their marriage lines: the promoter wants to keep the place for naked families, though single women (but not men) may rent at rates of $35-S6O a night. The State-owned Sebli and Sopra development companies have built their own nudist town. Port Nature.

So have the naked English. The Societe La Voie d’Rau, which has built the (much more charming) “Aphrodite village” at Leucate, is backed by British capital. The management says rather snootily that Aphrodite (220 homes now, 800 soon) attracts nudism’s haute bourgeoisie — surgeons, lawyers, even a few ambassadors. The Aphrodite crowd runs its own vigilante group to keep up moral standards: there is a 100 francs fine for undefined “bad behaviour.”