I feel the firm, yet malleable ground beneath the tops of my feet, knees, hips, breasts and my left cheekbone, separated from the lumpy sand only by terrycloth and sweat. I wriggle my shoulder to soften a mound so that it becomes a dip and my clavicle has a cradle to rest. I feel the heat permeate my skin, relax my muscles, and soften me to my core. Sweat is coaxed to the surface while my thoughts are pressed deep down, far away from this moment. My eyes are closed and my skin is bare, on display for all who pass by but immune to the impact of their gaze. I am soaking deep in the “moral bath of bodily unconsciousness”, for I am sunbathing.
My bathing practice, like most, includes heat, water, transitions between hot and cold, and communal spaces but it is far removed from the banyas, sentos and hamams of other countries. I live in Los Angeles and current-day California does not have a significant indoor bathing culture, however, its public beaches offer a bathhouse-adjacent experience. Sunbathing as a bathing practice connects a pleasure activity with health and well-being, and also (to my over-40-self's surprise), my personal empowerment. Sunbathing has historically shaped culture through shifting restrictive moral codes and prejudices and has even been an instigator and technique for civil rights and social justice movements.
I grew up in Southern California, the land of 72 degrees and sunshine, palm trees and beaches. This identity is integral to California — and Los Angeles in particular — but was actually a brand that was cultivated by developers and boosters to first draw consumptives and agricultural workers, and then tourists and the wealthy to its abundant rays. The mythology reinforced the fantasy that it was a tropical paradise: Eden reborn.
The 1800s had been dominated by the health crisis of tuberculosis and consumptives were eager to follow the promises of health experts recommending sunshine and fresh dry air. Droves of people flocked to Dr. Southern California’s perfect climate, and this “nature as cure” health doctrine became rooted as a key element of Southern California boosterism that has never really disappeared.
At the same time, many North American and European white tourists were also seeking out places that were marketed as "tropical" for a variety of reasons including the escape from harsh winters and the pleasure of year-round outdoor activity, even if they were actually sub-tropical or Mediterranean climates. Resorts began to pop up in places like Florida and in the Caribbean as well as Catalina Island, Coronado and Palm Springs. Southern California’s warm and arid climate perfection that lacked the sticky humidity of Florida and truly tropical locations, made it ideal for pleasure-seeking tourists.
Sanitoriums along with the resorts began populating these areas and spreading their gospel: that spending time in their sun-drenched decks and porches, with access to fresh, clean air will improve health and one's enjoyment of life. Doctors (both with and without medical degrees) contributed to the sales pitches of the Southern California region with the medical research they were promoting. Claims were made that the sunshine could treat and cure things as far ranging as indigestion, sleeplessness, lupus, rheumatism and cancer, and so sunbaths were prescribed just like any other medication.
Some examples of Los Angeles transplants following this promise of a new healthy lifestyle were architect and nudist advocate Richard Neutra and Dr. Philip M. Lovell, a self-designated doctor of naturopathy. Lovell commissioned Neutra to build his family a house that would be an exemplar for all the natural health practices he preached.
The "Health House" as it was called, was designed to offer all the health benefits of the region’s natural curative properties: sunshine, fresh air, proximity to nature and a vegetarian diet made possible by the area’s agricultural bounty. The pool was only filled with natural water (no chlorine) that could be drained out into the grounds to water the orchards filled with California’s most precious fruit: the avocado. Every bedroom had its own sleeping porch and areas of the house were designed for nude sunbathing, which Dr. Lovell recommended as a crucial part of daily routines: “The sun bath is as precious a part of your daily routine as any bathing hygiene.” The house is basically a sunbox made of windows, held together by a minimal steel-frame structure; the first of its kind.
The Lovell Health House, built in 1928 in Los Angeles, CA
While the research for many of the claims made by doctors and pseudo-doctors such as Lovell was not conclusive (or in some cases non-existent), sunbaths for their curative properties are adopted by many cultures. Hippocrates is said to have used the sun to treat certain diseases. The spiritual practice of sun gazing (a controlled method of looking directly at the sun at dawn and dusk to heal the body and quiet the mind) has been used by many cultures as well as contemporary yogis. The Ancient Egyptians, Mayans, Native Americans, Aztecs, Incas all had similar practices in which they worshipped the sun for its nourishing qualities.
There are plenty of other more conclusive medical studies: rickets was found to be largely caused by a lack of sunshine by Dr. Theobald Adrian Palm. Sunlight was discovered to kill tubercle bacilli which was the culprit behind tuberculosis. Heliotherapy and Phototherapy (therapies using light rays either from sunshine or artificial means) have been used by many successfully to treat other conditions such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and depression. Sunlight has been found to reinvigorate people suffering from a variety of ailments and the "sun cure" is now often attributed to Vitamin D, "the sunshine vitamin" which our bodies convert when exposed to sunshine.
Not everyone has the same relationship with the sun, but I personally feel much better when I am exposed to more sunshine. I have exponentially more energy and joy during the longer, sunnier months of the year. A nausea-inducing anxiety attack can be interrupted by the sun’s rays hitting my corneas.
The desire for healthy activity in the sun has not been relegated to the sick, and as seaside resorts and tropical islands gained popularity, eventually so did sunbathing. However, in the early 1900s, the growing interest in beach activities caused a crisis of propriety. At the turn of the century, it was still required for women's bodies to be predominantly covered up with ankle-length skirts and stockings covering up their legs. Both men's and women's tops also were clothed to protect others from the sight of their unsheltered nipples. Women's bathing attire included bulky wool dresses and stockings that not only sound horribly hot and uncomfortable but also like a drowning hazard.
People started to work this out for themselves, and bathing suits began shrinking. Both women and men began exposing more of their bodies and their skin to the sun. By 1930, the suntan was becoming fashionable, whereas prior it had been a sign of the lower classes and laborers, or was undesirable to white people whose white supremacy leanings caused them to believe that darker skin was a sign of moral degeneracy. Exposure of the body was (and still is, to some degree) equated with sexual openness, loose morals and even deviance or derangement. Women in particular have had more restrictions placed on their bodies and so it is quite remarkable how women shifted what was culturally acceptable through spending time at the beach, adjusting their clothing to be more appropriate to the activity, and allowing their skin to be kissed by the sun.
A tan is a visible marker of your skin's exposure and became a marker of the modernization of women. This was happening as the first-wave feminist movement was growing, and the twentieth century went on to have several waves that expanded equality through stretching the boundaries of what was acceptable for women to show and do with their bodies.
Sunbathing in a bikini is one place where I can expose of my skin and shrink the barrier between my body and the elements. As a teenager in the 90s, “laying out” and working on my tan was an activity I could do where I didn't have to conform to the extent of the modesty guidelines and dress codes of my strict home and school. It was a socially acceptable space where I could take freedom in wearing less clothing and begin to detach from my learned perceptions of morality from the mere existence of my body. I didn’t understand it in these terms as a teenager but I can see now that it was a space of personal liberation.
Recognizing this, I have become enthused by others who are seeking more freedom in terms of their bodies' full access to the sun. There have been ongoing efforts to create "free beaches" where clothing is optional in resistance to the restrictive (and to some, repressive) codes that don't allow for every inch of one's body to be exposed to the sun. Proponents of the idea that it is healthy and natural to be out in nature, au naturel, still have to sunbathe fully exposed behind the closed gates of a private nudist club, or take the risk of being cited or arrested if caught in a public space. The free beach movement highlights inequities surrounding private and public property as well as civil rights and even environmentalist concerns for those who are opposed to the consumerist damage done to our earth. The places where I can have my entire skin blanketed in the sun are rare and not always easy to access living in a place as dense as Los Angeles, and I often wonder if we (as Americans) will get to a place where the body is not so regulated or feared. Fingers crossed it happens in my lifetime.
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A great sunbathing session for me is when the day is hot and the sun is beaming— just on the verge of being too hot—and I lay my towel on the sand at the beach to lie down. After the first few minutes, I begin to adapt to the temperature and my restlessness dissipates. My mind starts to slow, and I am lulled into a deep relaxation hovering on the cusp of sleep. I lay there for a while, and then I turn over, sandwiched between the solar broiler above and the heating pad of the earth radiating upward. When I get too hot, I stand and walk down to the water to enter the cool, Pacific Ocean, bringing my body temperature down. I let the waves push me around, massaging my thighs and my torso while the sea salt smoothes my skin. Once revived, I return to my towel where I lie down to take another soak in my sunbath.