What is the definition of nudism?

Nudism, movement that advocates the practice of living without clothes. Advocates of nudism practice for the physical benefit derived from exposure of the body to what they consider to be healthful qualities of sunlight and fresh air; in a wider sense, however, nudism is a philosophy and a way of life. The proponents of nudism maintain that clothing should be abandoned when not absolutely necessitated by the rigors of the weather, as it serves to focus erotic attention on the body, thereby exciting an unhealthy sexual prurience. The shame customarily associated with nakedness in modern civilized society results, according to nudists, from centuries of cultural conditioning against complete exposure of the body in public. Nudism, by correcting in its practitioners this false sense of shame, enhances their self-assurance and furnishes them with a new appreciation of the essential beauty and dignity of the human body. Critics attack the nudist philosophy as being indecent and the publications put out by the movement as obscene from msn encarta