Clothing Optional?: Nudity and the Law of the Australian Beach' by Theodore Bennett in (2019) 31(1)
Bond Law Review 49 comments
This article comprises the first detailed legal analysis of nudity on the Australian beach. It provides an overview of the formal law around public nudity on Australian beaches and unpacks both the cultural significance and practical operation of regulation within th is context. It begins by demonstrating how the Australian beach is a particularly dense nexus of cultural meaning and significance, within which general cultural anxieties about public nudity are amplified. It then sets out the formal legal apparatus that performs the regulatory work that responds to these anxieties, including State/Territory offences relating to public exposure, public behaviour and bathing dress. However, the law ‘in the books’ about beach nudity diverges in significant ways from the law ‘in action’, and this analysis unpacks the practical side of the law of the Australian beach in terms of policing discretion, the application of legal standards of decency and propriety, and social patterns of nude beach use. The formal designation of certain spaces by some States/Territories as ‘free beaches’— where it is not against the law to be nude — is argued to constitute the symbolic containment, rather than endorsement, of public nudity.
Bennett argues
I began writing this article at the end of yet another swelteringly hot Australian summer. For many Australians a swim at one of the nation’s many beaches is a key means of keeping cool during these warmer months, but throughout the year the beach remains a popular location for a range of activities including surfing, sunbathing, exercising, picnicking, etc. However, in addition to constituting a space for relaxation and recreation the beach is also a space governed by regulation. One particularly longstanding and contentious regulatory issue is the extent to which a person can display their body at the beach, and this issue has seen marked change over time.
In the early 1800s concerns about nudity led to blanket bans on daytime bathing at some Sydney beaches. These bans were subsequently replaced by prohibitions that allowed but restricted beach use on ‘modesty’ grounds, including prohibitions on mixed bathing and prohibitions on undressing at the beach. In subsequent years patrolling ‘beach inspectors’ upheld requirements that swimming costumes sufficiently covered the body of beachgoers, including parts of the arms and legs. The introduction of the bikini to Australian beaches was a flashpoint of concern in the 1940s, but eventually it too was allowed. With such brief clothing becoming acceptable attire at the beach, by the 1970s the contours of contention around bodily display coalesced around the issue of nudity. Public support for allowing nudity on Australian beaches grew during this time and some jurisdictions began to designate specific beaches as spaces where public nudity was lawful. Such beaches are referred to by various names, including ‘nude beaches’ and ‘nudist beaches’, but this article will refer to them as ‘free beaches’. This choice of terminology reflects that there is no requirement that a person making use of such a beach be either nude or a nudist, but instead can make a ‘free’ decision to choose whether or not to be nude without fear of criminal legal repercussions (though the exact legal status of nudity on these beaches is more complex and will be discussed in detail in Parts III-IV below). However, the issue of nudity on Australian beaches has not been laid to rest. Political skirmishes continue to break out about whether nudity should be allowed at certain beaches, and a number of the ‘free beaches’ have subsequently been disestablished over time. The extent to which the body can be displayed on Australian beaches is thus a regulatory issue marked by both ongoing significance and ongoing turbulence. Yet despite all of this, the laws around nude beach use have raised barely a ripple within legal academia.
This article comprises the first detailed legal analysis of nudity on the Australian beach. The purpose of his analysis is two-fold: firstly, to provide an overview of the formal law around public nudity on Australian beaches, and, secondly, to unpack the cultural significance and practical operation of regulation within this context. In order to ground this analysis, this article draws on legal material about public order criminal offences, sociological and historical work dealing with social nudity in Australia, and cultural studies commentary on the beach as a particular kind of Australian space. The broad scope of this analysis is necessary because of the cultural importance of the beach within Australian society as well as the fact that, as legal academia has long recognised, close examination of an area of law will typically reveal that there are ‘distinctions between law in the books and law in action, between the rules that purport to govern the relations of man and man [sic] and those that in fact govern them’. These distinctions are particularly evident when analysing nudity on Australian beaches as clear divergences open up between the formal content of the laws relating to public nudity (beach law ‘in the books’) and the ‘living law’ of how nudity at the beach actually takes place and how it is policed and judged (beach law ‘in action’). The analysis is structured across the following three Parts. Part II contextualises the law in this area by engaging with the cultural meanings that attach to the Australian beach and to public nudity. Part III identifies the formal legal structures that govern the legal status of nudity on Australian beaches, focusing on the overlapping patchwork of State/Territory-based criminal offences that prohibit certain kinds of public exposure, public behaviour and bathing dress, as well as the legal exemptions granted to designated ‘free beaches’. Part IV unpacks how the legal rules discussed in Part III are suspended, modified or otherwise operate in unpredictable ways in their practical application to nude beach use in Australia.
Before the analysis can progress, some qualifications are required. This article is concerned solely with laws about nudity itself and only insofar as this nudity occurs within the context of the beach. Its focus is on nude beachgoers who may want to bathe, sunbathe or otherwise avail themselves of the space of the beach in much the same way as clothed beachgoers. These nude beachgoers may include lifestyle nudists, aesthetes in search of a more even tan, those who enjoy the feel of sun/sand/sea on their bare skin, etc. This article will not deal with atypical beach behaviour that could potentially involve nudity (such as public sex) nor will it deal with nudity in other contexts (such as public protests). It will also not deal with the issue of female toplessness as this is a particular kind of partial nudity that warrants its own individual analysis. This article will also not address the law of the beach in relation to the Australian Capital Territory because this jurisdiction is effectively landlocked.
