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The Documentary Podcast

Heart and Soul: Purity to nudity

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Gwen was brought up as a strict evangelical Christian. She was taught that women needed to control the way they dressed and acted to control the behaviour of men. When she was sexually abused, she believed it was her fault. But when she first stepped into a nudist community, she felt free. She was naked, with other naked people, and her nakedness was not making other people molest her. She learnt that her body was not something she had to hide. The BBC’s Josie Le Vay visits Gwen at her home in a nudist community in Florida, USA.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Come on and hop on! Fantastic! So we are getting on a golf buggy! Yes!

0:07.8

Welcome to Heart & Soul from the BBC World Service. So is this how people get

0:14.6

about their day-to-day in the park? Pretty much! Pretty much! Some people will use

0:17.8

their bicycle, a lot of people walk and hey Greg, this is fun! Gwen Blodgett is

0:25.8

giving me a tour around her gated community in Florida in a tiny electric golf

0:30.7

car. And then our pool's over here. Ricky's playing tunes. Hi Wendy! I'm being

0:37.2

introduced to people left, right and center. So you sort of know everyone, Wendy? I

0:42.4

know almost everybody's name and almost everybody knows me. No one seems to be

0:49.2

a stranger, but that doesn't mean they're all the same. I was seeing a bit. I've

0:56.1

noticed that she was wearing a cross on her neck. Absolutely! The majority of

1:00.5

people here have some level of Christian faith. And this surprised me and there's

1:07.0

something else about this place that might surprise you. One thing our listeners

1:12.1

won't know Gwen is that you and everybody that you're speaking to aren't

1:17.5

wearing a single stitch of clothing, you're all completely naked. That's right

1:23.5

Josie. This is a nudist resort and I'm a nudist. What even more surprising is

1:29.8

that Gwen used to believe nudists had been deceived by the devil. She was a strict

1:35.2

evangelical Christian, but decades the church was her life. And now she's sitting

1:41.6

next to me naked, telling me how she's found healing and nudism from the

1:46.2

aspects of our old Bible teachings that caused her the most harm. I'm Josie

1:51.5

Leveille and for this edition of Heart and Soul, I'm in Pasco County, which

1:56.4

some call the nudist capital of the United States. I've come to hear Gwen's

2:01.3

amazing conversion story and to meet Christians who believe nakedness can

...

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