And yes, some New York Times subscribers were offended by the immersion journalism. “I got an email last night from somebody saying, ‘I’m appalled that the New York Times stooped to such lows to titillate its audience,'” says Jake Silverstein, the magazine’s top editor. Another thought that the photo choice was offensive because the magazine goes out to subscribers with families, said Silverstein. Families, that is, who presumably do not skinny-dip in the Estonian sticks.

Such emailed objections, however, numbered in the single digits, says Silverstein. Mild, in other words. “It’s about as peaceful and, frankly, wholesome as a photograph of a family could be — it’s just that they didn’t have their clothes on,” says Silverstein. Most of the feedback agreed. Support, for example, came from nudist types, who said they were “proud of us for doing the right thing … seeing their values represented on the cover of the magazine,” says Silverstein. One reader sent the editor a note hoping that the photography “will teach us to love our bodies and our souls more than before.”

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Nicky Hoffman, editor of the Naturist Society’s N magazine (the “N” stands for “nude and natural”), tells the Erik Wemple Blog that everyone “should be able to enjoy this kind of family vacation. Such innocent, peaceful joy.” Such depictions are tough to get into mainstream outlets, says Hoffman, because “nudity with kids is always frowned upon and it’s the most natural thing in the world for kids to run around naked.”

Higher-ups at the New York Times didn’t cite body-love in signing off on the cover. Knowing that the photograph may conflict with New York Times sensibilities, Silverstein ran it by standards chief Phil Corbett — who asked the magazine to “go through the exercise of whether we thought it was appropriate,” Silverstein says — and Executive Editor Dean Baquet — who said, “I think it’s great.” Sounding like a fellow who closely monitors criticism on social media, Silverstein says that the decision to run the photo wasn’t the work of a bunch of guys — key photography and design staffers at the magazine are women.

Nudity has visited the cover of the New York Times Magazine before the Estonian vacationers, though, as Silverstein notes, it was an “entirely different situation.” Yes, entirely: In 1993, the magazine published a self-portrait of the mastectomy scar of former model Matuschka. “It was a taboo subject in the early ’90s. There was no press coverage, and there was no visual to go with the subject,” Matuschka told CBS News in 2013.