Women of Naturism: Gabby Quinn – Part 2

“Being comfortable with my body does not mean that my body becomes available to other people.”

When we published Part 1 of our conversation with Gabby Quinn, we said we could not have asked for a better conversation to open the Women of Naturism series. We truly meant it. The response from readers confirmed what we already knew… that this was exactly the kind of conversation naturism needs more of.

What happened next confirmed something else entirely.

The day after we published Part 1, we received two direct emails, attached to the article, from a gentleman who made specific note to us that he has been a naturist since before we were born. He listed his television and film credentials. He resented that we monetize naturism… (fact: everything we publish is 100% free to everyone).

In his second email, he said that he will write an article about naturism because, in his words, he is a “TRUE Naturalist” and a “professional Fine ‘Art Figure Model”. Although he was very clear he wouldn’t ever pay for a subscription.

Although both emails he sent were direct replies to the free article he received through his free subscription, he didn’t actually engage with anything specific in the article itself. Of the 26 of our articles he received and opened since becoming a free subscriber last May, he has never responded to a single one until the moment he read an article about a Black woman with three years in naturism who told the community it needs to change.

In two emails, he demonstrated the dynamic Gabby described in her interview. The gatekeeping. The credentials as leverage. The assumption that history confers authority over direction. The discomfort when the room starts filling with people who don’t look like the people who built it.

Unfortunately, his story may have been very interesting to hear. Whether intentional or not, the emails came across as a trigger response masked as a rant about money and “purity.”

We thought you should know that before you read Part 2. Because what Gabby says in this second half of the conversation isn’t theoretical. It is happening in real time. Right here.

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In Part 1, we met Gabby Quinn… born in Kingston, Jamaica, raised in the Bronx, screenwriter turned tech sales professional turned full-time naturist advocate. She came to naturism in 2023 on a first date at a nudist resort, fresh out of a long abusive relationship and searching for a way to reclaim her body on her own terms. She got undressed immediately and never looked back.

Within two years she had left corporate America, built the Naturist Business Network, co-founded The Naturist Vibe podcast, and developed RK Underground with her partner Dan Speers. Many in the community know her as The Crowned Nudi – the crowned part being her Afro, not an actual crown.

She talked about what brought her to naturism, what she is building and why, what the community gets structurally wrong, and how she maintains her own voice alongside a partner who has been in this community for most of his life.

If you haven’t read Part 1, start there. This conversation builds.

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The naturist community publicly champions values of inclusion, equality, and respect for all bodies. And yet it skews significantly older, whiter, and more male than those values suggest it should. You work inside that community every day while also critiquing it openly. How do you hold both of those things at the same time? Is there a cost to that balancing act that you don’t often talk about publicly?

I actually don’t see advocacy and criticism as opposing things. For me, they come from the same place.

I believe deeply in naturism. I believe in what it can offer people: freedom, body acceptance, community, connection, and the ability to exist in your body without it automatically being sexualized. I wouldn’t be investing this much of my life into naturism if I didn’t genuinely believe in it and live it myself.

But believing in something doesn’t mean pretending its problems don’t exist.

You can’t make something better if you’re unwilling to highlight the places where it isn’t living up to its own values. If we say naturism is about inclusion, equality, and acceptance, but certain people consistently walk into our spaces and don’t see themselves represented, we should be willing to ask why. If younger people, people of color, women, queer people, or people with disabilities are telling us there are barriers to participation, I don’t think defending the status quo helps naturism. Listening to them does.

To me, criticism without investment can just become complaining. But criticism from someone who is actually doing the work, building spaces, creating opportunities, showing up, and trying to offer solutions is different. I’m not standing outside naturism throwing rocks at it. I’m inside of it helping build what I believe it can become.

And I think you have to really live this to make meaningful change. I’m not advocating for some theoretical version of naturism that I only talk about online. I go to clubs. I attend events. I organize events. I create naturist media. I talk to businesses, creators, longtime naturists, and newcomers. I hear what people love about this community, but I also hear where they feel excluded or misunderstood. All of that informs how I approach the work.

There absolutely can be a cost to being outspoken about those things.

Sometimes people interpret criticism as an attack on naturism itself. There are moments where saying, “We need to do better here,” gets heard as, “Everything about this community is terrible.” Those are two completely different statements. And when you are publicly challenging traditions or conversations people have been comfortable with for decades, you’re not always going to be the most popular person in the room.

There is also the emotional cost of constantly having to explain that wanting naturism to evolve doesn’t mean disrespecting the people who built it. I have enormous respect for the generations who kept naturism alive long before I arrived. But honoring that history doesn’t require freezing the community in time.

I think sometimes people assume inclusion means replacing what already exists. I see it as expansion. I want the older naturist who has been doing this for fifty years to still have their community. I also want the 25-year-old Black woman discovering naturism online to look at it and think, “There’s a place for me here too.” Those things can coexist.

And there are definitely moments when being the person willing to say uncomfortable things can feel isolating. You sometimes wonder how a statement is going to be received, whether people will intentionally misunderstand it, or whether challenging something is going to affect a relationship or opportunity.

But I would have a much harder time being silent about something I genuinely believe could be better.

For me, loving a community means caring enough to challenge it. If I thought naturism was hopeless, I wouldn’t bother. The fact that I’m willing to critique it is probably one of the clearest indications of how much I believe in its potential.

I’m not interested in tearing naturism down. I’m interested in helping it live up to what it already says it wants to be.

You are passionate about protecting naturist spaces from people who violate their intended purpose. Ethical naturism is not just a talking point for you. It’s central to everything you do. Have you ever had to hold someone in the naturist community directly accountable for crossing that line? What happened, and what did it cost you?

Yes. I’ve had an experience where two friends of mine were made uncomfortable by someone in a naturist space, and I made the decision to report what happened.

I’m intentionally not going to get into the specific details because those details belong to the people who were affected, and protecting their privacy is more important to me than telling a more dramatic story. What I can say is that I believed a line had been crossed and that the situation needed to be brought to the attention of the people responsible for that space.

And I reported it.

The issue was ultimately handled, and if I could go back in time knowing everything I know now, I would absolutely make the same decision again.

I can’t really say that reporting it cost me anything. Maybe there were people who had opinions about whether I should have said something, but that honestly doesn’t carry much weight for me. The importance of reporting something that could affect someone’s safety, comfort, or ability to participate in naturism outweighs somebody being unhappy that I spoke up. And if someone believes I shouldn’t report behavior that violates another person’s boundaries simply because doing so might create tension, I think that says much more about their priorities than it does about mine.

For me, this is where ethical naturism stops being something you put in a mission statement and becomes something you actually have to practice.

We can say we want safe, respectful, non-sexual naturist environments all day long, but those spaces don’t remain that way automatically. We have to protect them. That means having standards for behavior, taking people seriously when something happens, reporting concerns, and holding people accountable when those standards are crossed.

It also can’t depend on whether I personally know or like the person affected. If I see or become aware of behavior that I genuinely believe violates someone’s consent or boundaries in a naturist environment, I’m going to speak up whether that person is my friend or someone I’ve never met before.

And the same standard has to apply to the person whose behavior is being questioned. Friendship, popularity, status, or how long someone has been in the naturist community shouldn’t give anyone immunity from accountability.

That’s what ethical naturism means to me. It’s not about claiming that every naturist space will always be perfectly safe or that uncomfortable situations will never happen. It’s about what we do when they do happen.

If we want people, especially newcomers and people from communities that may already feel hesitant entering naturist spaces, to trust us when we say these environments are built around consent and respect, then our actions have to back that up.

Sometimes protecting a community means being willing to have an uncomfortable conversation or file the report.

I’ll do that every time.

There is a persistent assumption in broader culture that women who are comfortable being naked in social settings must also be comfortable with sexual attention. That comfort with one implies openness to the other. You came to naturism out of an abusive relationship and have made consent and boundaries foundational to your advocacy. How does that particular assumption land for you personally?

It’s an assumption, not the truth. And anyone who believes that a woman being comfortable with social nudity automatically means she is open to sexual attention probably needs a much deeper understanding of boundaries and consent.

For me, those two things are completely separate. Being comfortable with my body does not mean that my body becomes available to other people. Choosing to be nude in a naturist environment is not an invitation to be sexualized, touched, pursued, commented on, or treated as though I have somehow given up the right to decide what kind of attention I am comfortable receiving.

If anything, my experiences have made me even more protective of that distinction. Coming out of an abusive relationship made autonomy incredibly important to me. One of the things naturism gave me was the ability to experience my body on my own terms again. So the idea that someone could look at that freedom and interpret it as sexual availability completely misses the point.

Consent does not disappear with clothing.

A woman can be completely comfortable walking through a naturist resort nude and still have very firm boundaries about who touches her, who speaks to her sexually, who photographs her, who flirts with her, or what kind of relationship she wants with anyone around her. Those boundaries do not require an explanation or justification.

I also think this assumption is one of the reasons some women are hesitant to explore naturism in the first place. We already live in a culture where women’s bodies are frequently treated as though visibility equals availability. Naturism challenges that idea by saying a naked body can simply exist without being consumed sexually.

That is why ethical behavior within naturist spaces matters so much to me. If we tell women and newcomers that naturism is about non-sexual social nudity, respect, and body acceptance, then our behavior has to prove it. People should be able to experience nudity without constantly managing someone else’s interpretation of their body.

And that applies outside naturist spaces too. Someone posting a naturist photo online is not consenting to sexual messages. Someone attending a clothing-optional event is not consenting to sexual advances. Someone being confident in their body is not consenting to anything beyond what they have actually agreed to.

For me, that distinction is very simple: nudity is a state of being. Consent is permission. One never automatically creates the other.

That is something I will continue to be very direct about because I don’t think we can normalize non-sexual nudity without also teaching people to respect the boundaries that make that freedom possible.

Naturism presents itself publicly as a non-sexual social practice… full stop. That’s the official position of virtually every naturist organization and publication. You’ve been inside this community for three years now, hosting conversations, producing events, building networks. Setting aside the official answer… what’s your honest read on whether naturism actually lives up to that standard? Should it change?

I think naturism can and does function as a non-sexual social practice, but we do it a disservice if we assume everyone in naturist spaces always adheres to that ideal.

Naturists are still human. Attraction exists, relationships form, people flirt, and some have sexual lives outside naturism. None of that makes naturism sexual. The key distinction is behavior and context.

Problems arise when someone interprets nudity as sexual availability, ignores boundaries, seeks sexual gratification in a naturist setting, or blurs the purpose of the space. At that point, we need to be clear: this is not acceptable here, and it must be addressed.

Ignoring these realities does not protect naturism, it weakens it. Ethical naturism requires acknowledging that issues can occur, responding to them, enforcing boundaries, and building a culture where consent and respect are actively practiced, not just stated.

So should naturism’s definition change? I do not think so. The distinction between naturism and sexual activity is essential, especially in a society that often conflates nudity with sex.

What does need to change is how we talk about it.

We can affirm that naturism is non-sexual social nudity without pretending people stop being human when they are nude. The goal is not to eliminate attraction or police private lives, but to ensure clear understanding: nudity is not an invitation, consent is required, and the purpose of the space matters.

That is the version of naturism I believe in and the one we are working to support. Not a sanitized ideal where problems never occur, but a mature community that recognizes them, addresses them, and protects those who simply want to practice naturism.

To me, that honesty is a stronger defense of non-sexual social nudity than pretending there are no gray areas.

Younger women are underrepresented in naturism publicly, and women of color are even more so. You’ve built platforms specifically to address that gap. But beyond the demographics, the imagery, the history, what do you actually think is keeping younger women and women of color away?

I don’t think there is a single reason younger women and women of color are less present in naturism. It’s more a combination of barriers that together can make it feel like a space not built with them in mind.

Representation matters, but it has to go beyond images. If people don’t see others like themselves actively participating, leading, and shaping the community, the message of inclusion loses credibility quickly.

Safety and trust are also major factors. Women already navigate concerns about harassment, sexualization, and boundary violations in many spaces. Naturism asks for an additional level of vulnerability, and that requires a strong, clearly demonstrated culture of respect. For women of color, there can also be the added experience of being one of very few people who look like them, which can heighten visibility and discomfort even in well-meaning environments.

Cultural perception plays a role as well. Younger generations often encounter naturism as something that feels outdated or disconnected from how they communicate, socialize, and build community today. At the same time, public judgment around nudity is still uneven, especially for women, and can be even more complicated for women of color due to family and cultural expectations.

Practical barriers shouldn’t be overlooked either: accessibility, cost, location, lack of clear information, and whether events feel welcoming or relevant to younger audiences all influence whether someone even tries to engage.

Because of all this, simply saying “naturism is for everyone” isn’t enough. It has to be demonstrated through action: creating welcoming and relevant experiences, ensuring visible diversity in real participation (not just marketing), centering consent and boundaries in practice, supporting women in leadership roles, and building spaces where people of color are genuinely part of shaping the culture rather than just included symbolically.

It also requires openness to feedback. Dismissing concerns with “that hasn’t been my experience” misses the point. Different people can experience the same space very differently, and understanding why requires listening without defensiveness.

I don’t believe younger women or women of color are less interested in naturism. In fact, its core values, body autonomy, freedom from judgment, and community, could resonate strongly. The real question is whether the culture consistently reflects those values in a way that makes new people feel they truly belong.

That is the gap worth addressing.

Before naturism, you were into drama and dance in high school, screenwriting at university, years of writing stories. Now you host a podcast, produce events, and advocate publicly for a movement. How much of what you do today is performance? And is there a version of Gabby Quinn that exists completely offstage, away from the work and the platform? If so, what is she like?

I want to be very clear about this: outside of the actual drama and dance I did when I was younger, none of what I do today is a performance.

What you hear from me on the podcast, what I write in blogs, what I say on social media, how I show up on TNV livestreams, and who you see on stage at TNV Live is genuinely me. Those are my opinions, my personality, my humor, my frustrations, my passion, and my beliefs. I may be more polished or focused when there is a microphone in front of me, but I’m not creating a character to do it.

I think having a background in drama, dance, screenwriting, and storytelling absolutely helps me communicate. I understand pacing, presentation, how to tell a story, and how to hold the community’s attention. Those are skills. But using those skills to communicate effectively is very different from performing a version of myself that doesn’t exist.

The Crowned Nudi isn’t some alter ego I switch on when the camera starts rolling. It’s Gabby. Maybe with better lighting and a microphone, but still Gabby.

And yes, there is absolutely a version of me away from all of this. I’m not sitting at home giving hot takes into an podcast microphone all day. I can be very private. I like being home. I like spending time with Dan and my friends, relaxing, laughing, watching things, having conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with naturism or business, and just existing.

I also need that separation because when your passion becomes also your work, it can very easily consume every part of your life. Naturism is incredibly important to me, and what we’re building is a huge part of my life, but it is not the entirety of who I am.

So I would say there is a difference between public Gabby and private Gabby, but the difference isn’t authenticity. It’s access.

The public gets the parts of me that I’m comfortable sharing. The people closest to me get everything else.

But neither version is a performance.

Every significant commitment costs something. It can be time, money, relationships, a version of yourself you leave behind. You left a career, built businesses, and made naturism the center of your life in two years. What has this path cost you personally that you didn’t expect when you started?

Honestly, I don’t feel like this path has cost me anything personally in the way people might expect.

My friends are still my friends, and they’ve been incredibly supportive throughout this journey. Nothing about my choices has changed those relationships in a negative way, and I’m really grateful for that stability in my life.

When it comes to family, they don’t get a vote in how I choose to live my life. I’m an adult. I don’t have children. I’ve made my path, I’m happy with it, and it really isn’t up for debate. They don’t have to make the same choices I make or completely understand every decision, but I don’t need permission to pursue something that is meaningful to me.

Leaving tech also doesn’t feel like something naturism “cost” me. I made that decision intentionally. I had reached a point where I didn’t want to continue spending my life building someone else’s success while constantly wondering what would happen if I gave that same energy to something I actually believed in. So I don’t look back at my corporate career as something I sacrificed. I look at leaving it as choosing myself.

Of course, building businesses costs time and money. It requires long days, financial investment, difficult decisions, and a lot of mental energy. Dan and I have had to become very intentional about our schedules because when your relationship and your businesses overlap, you have to make sure there is still room to just be people together. Those are real challenges, but I see them as the realities of building something, not as losses I resent.

What has surprised me most is how quickly naturism became connected to almost every part of my professional life. What began as something personal grew into advocacy, media, events, business, community building, and a much larger mission. That means I have to be conscious about maintaining parts of my life that aren’t work, because when you genuinely love what you do, work can quietly eat every available hour if you let it.

I don’t feel like I lost my old life. I feel like I made a decision about what I wanted my life to become.

There may always be people who don’t understand it, agree with it, or would have chosen differently. That’s fine. They’re not the ones who have to live my life.

I am. And I’m very comfortable with the path I chose.

You came to naturism in 2023 as someone who had never experienced it before, fresh out of an abusive relationship and searching for something. That person existed. She made a decision that changed everything. Is there anything about who she was, before The Crowned Nudi, that you miss?

I don’t think there’s anything about who I was before The Crowned Nudi that I necessarily miss, because I don’t look at that version of myself as someone I left behind. She’s still me. I’ve just grown.

Anything about myself that I didn’t like, anything that was holding me back, hurting me, or preventing me from becoming the person I wanted to be, I worked on changing. And that work actually started before The Crowned Nudi ever existed. I had already reached a point in my life where I was examining who I was, what I wanted, what I would no longer tolerate, and what needed to change for my own well-being.

At the same time, the things I loved about myself, the things I knew were some of the best parts of me, I kept. My curiosity, my creativity, my sense of humor, my willingness to take chances, my independence, my passion, my ability to speak my mind, and the part of me that has always been willing to do things a little differently are all still very much here.

That’s just growing and evolving.

I don’t believe personal growth means becoming an entirely different person. Sometimes it means being honest enough with yourself to say, “This part of me isn’t serving me anymore,” while also being confident enough to say, “This part is absolutely worth protecting.”

Naturism became another part of that evolution. It didn’t create a new Gabby or erase the woman who existed before it. It gave me another environment where I could continue becoming more comfortable with myself, my body, my boundaries, my voice, and the direction I wanted my life to take.

And I think that distinction matters because sometimes we tell stories of transformation as though the person we were before was somehow lesser. I don’t feel that way about her. She got me here. She survived things, learned things, made mistakes, took risks, and eventually made the decision to walk into a nudist resort in 2023 without having any idea what that decision would set into motion. The Crowned Nudi isn’t a replacement for who I was before. She’s an evolution of her.

So no, I don’t really miss the old me because the parts of her worth keeping never went anywhere. And the parts that needed to change? I’m glad I had the courage to change them.

That’s growth. You’re supposed to evolve.

You describe yourself as an open book and say you have nothing to hide. That’s a position of genuine freedom that not everyone in naturism gets to feel. For a woman considering naturism for the first time, what would you tell them?

I would tell her to explore naturism on her own terms. You don’t have to be fearless, publicly nude, or open about it with everyone to belong.

Start somewhere you feel safe, take your time to do your research, and ask questions whenever you need to. And please remember that being nude never means giving up your boundaries. You can say no, cover up, leave, or report anything that makes you uncomfortable. Nudity is not consent.

If you don’t immediately see many women who look like you or share your background, I want you to know that your presence still matters and you still belong. Representation can be uneven, but that doesn’t make your place in the space any less valid.

Most importantly, give yourself permission to discover what naturism means to you. It changed my life, but your experience doesn’t have to look like mine. It just has to feel right for you.

You are actively building what you call a modern future for naturism. If it works, if the vision you and Dan are working toward actually succeeds, what does naturism look like in ten years? And sitting here today, what’s your honest assessment of the odds?

If what Dan and I are building succeeds, naturism in ten years will not just be different, it will be transformed. It will be more diverse, more visible, more connected, and more part of everyday life.

I want a future where younger people, women, people of color, queer people, and people from all backgrounds are not only welcomed, but actively shaping naturism. Leading it, building its businesses, creating its media, and defining its culture. Naturism should not be something people simply join, but something they help evolve. Ethical naturism, grounded in consent, respect, and clear boundaries, must be the foundation.

For that to happen, naturism needs better infrastructure. Strong media that tells our stories clearly. Marketing that makes naturism easy to discover and understand. Creators who can reach beyond the existing community. Sustainable businesses that raise standards. Clubs that respect tradition while embracing new tools and new generations. Naturism should feel less like a closed subculture and more like a normal, open part of life.

Dan brings lifelong experience in naturism and its traditions. I bring an outside perspective that questions why things cannot evolve faster. That mix of continuity and challenge is essential to what we are building.

I think the odds are real, but not guaranteed. Naturism is at a crossroads. It can resist change and slowly shrink, or it can grow into something more modern and relevant. What gives me hope is the creativity and energy already in the community. The desire for something better is already there.

Ten years from now, I do not want to be remembered for changing naturism. I want to see a movement so strong and diverse that it no longer depends on any one person.

If that happens, we will have done something bigger than build a project.

We will have helped open a new chapter of naturism.

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We set out to build a series about women whose voices are largely missing from naturism’s public story. We did not expect our very first conversation to be this complete… this honest, this layered, and this willing to sit with the uncomfortable parts alongside the joyful ones.

Gabby Quinn gave us real answers. She named what is broken without abandoning what she loves. She described the cost of visibility without performing victimhood and she talked about consent, accountability, race, and the future of a movement she has been part of for three years with more clarity than people who have been in it for decades.

We are proud to have opened Women of Naturism with this conversation. We are proud of the series it is becoming. And we are grateful to Gabby for trusting us with her story.

The next chapter of naturism is being written. She is one of the people writing it.

You can follow Gabby Quinn at:

Instagram: @thecrownednudi

Bluesky: @thecrownednudi.bsky.social

Naturist Business Network: naturistbusinessnetwork.com

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Are you a woman with a story to tell?

Women of Naturism is an ongoing series and we are always looking for new voices. There is no single profile of the woman we are looking for. She might be young or not so young. She might be deeply embedded in the naturist community or she might experience clothes-free living entirely on her own terms. She might be ready to share her name and photos or she might need the protection of anonymity. All of that is a conversation we are willing to have.

What we are looking for is honesty. A real account of what this life actually looks like from where you are living it.

If that sounds like you, we would love to hear from you. Reach out to us directly at OurNaturistLife.com contact page. Everything is confidential unless you decide otherwise. Nothing is published without your explicit approval at every stage.

Every woman’s story deserves to be told. Even the ones that cannot yet be told out loud.

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We hope you enjoy our articles and interviews with other naturists around the world. You can always subscribe here in Substack or over on our website, ournaturistlife.com. Or you can buy us a spark or a subscription through Ko-fi. We truly appreciate it.

Kevin and Corin