Colorado isn't what it once was.
There has been a lot of digital ink spilled over the issues around women's sports today, most of them being the intrusion of dudes "identifying" as women entering those sports, miraculously setting all kinds of new records. We are, of course, in a time when someone can "identify" as a man, a woman, as an otherkin polymorphic pixie, or as a pastrami and sauerkraut sandwich on rye, and expect people to take them seriously and cheer their "much brave, so courage."
With that, and what with the remarkably weird transition that Colorado has undertaken in recent years, it should come as little surprise that the Sunlight Mountain Ski Resort's Boot Tan Fest's traditionally women-only, after-hours naked ski event will now be open to "female-identifying and non-binary" skiers.
A skiing event marketed primarily toward women allows 'female-identifying and nonbinary' skiiers on the slopes during the ski retreat's annual after-hours naked lap.
Boot Tan Fest is returning to the Colorado slopes in March for a weekend of skiing and special events meant to bolster friendship among the female skiier community.
The event, first put on in 2021 with just 27 skiiers, is 'the largest ski and snowboard festival on the planet for women and femmes,' according to its website.
Boot Tan Fest has expanded considerably since its founding. Last year, '400+ incredible women & femmes ignited Boot Tan Fest's liberating vibe.'
The Sunlight Mountain Ski Resort is a private business, of course, and may do as they like, but if one were to bet on this year's attendance, it would be prudent to bet on the number of naked women skiers being somewhat off this year. But it's hard to tell - Colorado is not what it was 30 years ago. And if it's a blowout for the Boot Tan Fest, well, good for them, even if there are a few extra ski poles in attendance.
Boot Tan Fest is not entirely taking over Sunlight Mountain, so during the day anyone - male, female, or neither - will be invited to join in on the skiing and snowboarding.
But, once the resort closes at 3pm on March 29, the slopes will be open only to Boot Tan Fest official guests, who will be invited to take the ski lifts up the mountain before stripping down for the naked lap.
'It’s a normal ski day with your clothes on and then it’s an after-hours thing,' Verrochi said, adding that undressing is not a requirement.
The event, she said, aims to be a safe space for all.
There are benefits, of course, to attending this, not least of which is the opportunity to visit a bazaar for Colorado-owned businesses. In addition to other wares, a skier can receive a custom tattoo commemorating the naked ski event - a sort of tit for tat, one might say. Supporting local businesses is always a good thing, after all.
While it's likely this decision is going to make some of the women attendees uncomfortable, at least the... new attendees won't be competing for scholarship money, or for spots on an Olympic team, or actually doing severe bodily harm to actual women.
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The "safe space for all" part remains to be seen. If people are uncomfortable, they can leave. This is a privately held event on private property. But the trend here is the same as it is in women's sports - lending credence to something that just isn't so. This whole trend is like the Energizer Bunny on LSD: it just keeps getting weirder, and weirder, and weirder. The Boot Tan Fest is -- call it what you will, but this is the facts of the case -- allowing men into what is supposed to be a women-only event, and what's more, it's an event that, due to the forgoing of any attire, makes the status of the "-identifying" characters all that much more obvious.
Full disclosure: I lived in Colorado for 30 years. I moved there after leaving active duty in the Army for the first time and lived there until my wife and I moved to the Great Land some years ago. When I first moved to Colorado in the late '80s, it was South Wyoming; if you left the Denver area and, as I did in those years, spent some time mooching around in the Centennial State's awe-inspiring stretch of the Rockies, you regularly saw men and women packing belt iron and every mountain meadow along a Forest Service road was likely to be pressed into service and an impromptu shooting range. But by the time I left that state, Colorado had become East California, and that trend kept up after we moved away.
It looks now like the change may be baked in.
This seems appropriate.
