PALM SPRINGS â€" For Elizabeth Young, Desert Shadows was a place where she could shed her blouse, pantyhose, sensible heels â€" and everything else â€" and dive into a game of water volleyball.
She and her husband, John, drove from Orange County to the nudist getaway a few times a year to escape their 9-to-5 lives. After its owner filed for bankruptcy in 2007, the Youngs feared someone would raze the hotel, or force guests to wear pants. So they bought the place and renamed it Desert Sun.
At first, nudist groups embraced the couple as a welcome addition to their oft-misunderstood industry. Elizabeth has the blond sunniness of a televangelist's wife, and John the bravado of a salesman closing a deal. They spent millions sprucing up the place, but the goodwill they generated soon evaporated, and they were pilloried on nudist websites as traitors.
Their sin?
The Youngs announced what they considered a business decision but what others viewed as an attack on core nudist principles:
No more children at Desert Sun.
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For the most part, "naturists" â€" the industry's preferred term â€" don't view bare-naked hiking or volleyball as sexual. That's why children are typically encouraged to participate.
"Kids are natural nudists, number one," said Nicky Hoffman, publisher of the Naturist Society magazine, Nude Natural. She criticized society for teaching "kids to be ashamed of their bodies."
Introducing children to nudism is also viewed as a way to ensure the community's survival. Some naturists fret that their ranks â€" which the American Assn. for Nude Recreation says fuel a $440-million industry â€" could dwindle as onetime flower children die off.
"We need to make sure there's another generation that knows we're here," said Gary Mussell of the Southern California Naturist Assn.
There's no precise count of American nudists, but Naturist Society membership has dipped from an apex of 37,000 in the early 1990s to about 20,000 today. The number of resorts and clubs has held steady at about 250 nationwide. So many of them allow children that the Southern California Naturist Assn., for one, has a section on its website addressing questions about families who disrobe together:
We Have Two Kids, a Boy and a Girl. How Do I Make Our Children Comfortable with Nudity?
What Do I Do When My Nudist 'Tween' Starts to Become a 'Young Lady'?
In recent years, however, a major threat has emerged to nudism's child-friendly traditions: technology. The ubiquity of camera phones has prompted some nudists to take extra precautions, lest photos of their children's bare bottoms end up online.
Many resorts restrict where guests can use cellphones and cameras. Nudists also police each other, particularly on public beaches. "If they see someone taking photographs, that camera might end up in the water," Hoffman said.
Even at Naturist Society gatherings, the only person allowed to take pictures of nude yoga and nude pudding tosses â€" and nude anything else â€" is a photographer whom Hoffman has vetted.
"We're more careful than everyone else," she said, a common refrain in the nudist community.
For years, the Youngs didn't think much about the issue. Then they became resort owners.
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