Naked & Clothing-optional Bike ride

TNI Bureau: While we have censor boards in India to trim the film footage in a mood to not to allow pornographic or hard controversial scenes in a film, it seems unbelievable when we heard about a ride, where full or partially naked people take part. One of these type rallies is the World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) that took place days before.

WNBR is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants ride together mainly on bicycles (some people also ride on skateboards and inline skates) to propagate against environmental pollution and to have a cleaner and safer world. It was started in 2004 and held in 28 cities, in ten countries on four continents and by 2010, the ride had expanded to 74 cities, in 17 countries including in the US, UK, Hungary and Paraguay.

Obviously the weapon of nudity is used to draw huge attention in this type of ride and the dress code motto is “bare as you dare”. Here top free nudity is encouraged, but not mandatory. Thus, it is up to the participant that how much he/she will cover his body part. Some people prefer to ride in their underwear while some go completely naked. But many of them though go naked they paint their body so as to offer a wearing effect.

Especially in the WNBR, there is even no mandate to cover the intimate parts; this is a distinctive feature of WNBR against other cycling events.

There are many clothing-optional cycling events around the world besides WNBR. The motives of these rides are mainly political, recreational or artistic. According to the participants of these rides, this is a social movement to accord women and girls the right to be topless in public where men and boys have that right.

Creative expression is also encouraged to make a funny atmosphere during the ride to capture the attention of people and the partakers are also permitted to make different sounds through musical instruments and bull horns to grab attention of the crowd.