The Nude Beach and the Single Female

Adrienne C.
8 min readApr 6, 2021

What it’s like to bare it all outdoors as a woman

Photo by Dainis Graveris on Unsplash

“Hippie Hollow.”

“What’s that?” I asked, staring over my margarita at my date for the evening.

“It’s a clothing-optional part of Lake Travis in Austin. I think you’d love it.”

He had officially lost me at “clothing-optional,” but that didn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued. I listened as he told me all about the specific area of the lake where going nude was the norm. Even though I lived about two-and-a-half hours away in Houston at the time, I’d never heard of the place. But it was pretty well-known among the locals, which I discovered as he regaled me with the tale of the boat that had capsized from curious oglers leaning over on one side to get a good look at the nude sunbathers.

And I have to admit, I was curious myself. A place where people take off…everything? In public? I couldn’t even contemplate doing such a thing.

Until a year later.

I had just turned thirty and was in the midst of one of those minor life crises that are too early to be “mid-” and too late to be “quarter-.” Mine manifested in a quest to try one new thing every day for a year, inspired by a blogger I had heard about who had done the same thing.

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Adrienne C.

Dominatrix of the written word. I write about writing, politics, race, money, religion, sex — hence the editor of The Third Rail