Naked… on Television… in 1953?

Every once in a while, I stumble across something in the dusty corners of the internet that makes me stop and think, Well, I'll be damned.

This is one of those things.

On June 14, 1953, What's My Line? welcomed a perfectly respectable-looking woman named Yolande Reed onto the program. As was the whole premise of the show, the celebrity panel had to figure out what she did for a living.

Her occupation?

She ran a nudist camp.

Remember, guys, we're talking about 1953. Eisenhower was president. I Love Lucy was one of the biggest shows on television. Playboy wouldn't publish its first issue until later that year. And here was a woman sitting on one of America's most popular television programs while Dorothy Kilgallen, Steve Allen, Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf tried to figure out that her business involved people taking off all their clothes.

And here's the part I particularly love: when the subject of a "nudist colony" comes up, Reed politely explains that they don't call them colonies anymore. The preferred term was a nudist park or resort.

Apparently even nudists had already gone through a rebranding exercise by 1953. 😂

What strikes me most about the clip, though, is how delightfully matter-of-fact the whole thing is. There's some giggling and innuendo, naturally—this was television, after all—but Reed isn't presented as some bizarre sexual curiosity. She's a businesswoman whose business just happens to involve people who prefer not to wear pants.

Seventy-three years later, that feels surprisingly familiar.

We sometimes talk about nudism and body acceptance as though we're pushing society into completely new territory. Clips like this are a wonderful reminder that people have been stripping off, finding community and discovering that the human body really isn't anything to be ashamed of for a very, very long time.

And apparently they've been explaining it to curious clothed people for just as long.

So pour yourself a cup of coffee—or take off your pants, since you're among friends—and enjoy this marvelous little piece of nudist history.

Here's Yolande Reed, nudist camp proprietor, confusing the hell out of the panel on What's My Line? in 1953.