Spain calls on women to swim topless to "fight discrimination" (Igualat i Feminismes)
The past week was a week full of boobs in the public space.
Not with us, of course.
With us, boobs are both covered and considered a minority, even though we make up 51% of the population.
But in the world - a celebration.
It started at the Oscars, or rather at Vanity Fair's after-party, where many looks and little fabric were seen, chief among them the feathered skirt and top worn by actress Hunter Schaefer.
It continued at the Canadian Music Awards, where a topless activist stormed the stage during Avril Lavigne's acceptance speech, but the highlight came from Berlin, where last week it was decided to allow women to swim topless in municipal swimming pools, just like men.
The decision was made by the director of the public pools in the city, after a woman who was not allowed to swim in the pool in the city bare-chested, filed a complaint with the office of the legal advisor of the Senate.
On behalf of the office, it was stated: "The Office of the Ombudsman welcomes the decision, because it presents equal rights for all residents of Berlin, whether they are men, women, or non-binary." Words as if they came out of our House of Representatives, eh? At night they cry, in the morning they cover:
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"I'm so hot it's a burden."
Women throw themselves at me and I don't have time for that."
Well, I'm playing her as progressive and enlightened, criticizing the conservatism of the people's elected officials. To be honest - the first thought that went through my head when I saw the announcement about this decision was: enough, well, it's excessive. I understand the logic, but it's just too strange for me. And I still consider myself a liberal person.
While I'm trying to reconcile the internal contradiction between myself and understand if this is a "progressive Tirlol" or if I'm simply much more conservative than I want to think, it turns out that in the meantime, in Berlin itself, the city where the decision was passed and whose residents it really concerns - react to the news with quite complete equanimity.
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"I saw the news about it with half an eye," Nirit, an Israeli by origin, 44 years old, who has lived in Berlin for 17 years, told me.
"It's non-personal here. Even so, if you go to the lake you can be topless and there's no problem with that, and almost no one goes to the pool anyway. It's only done in the winter and even then - many times it's in a sauna that initially you can only enter naked ".
Well, it is well known that Dean Topless in Europe is not Dean Topless in Israel, and even more so in Berlin - a city that, with its club scene and nightlife, what is bare breasts in the pool.
But the indifference to the decision in question does not come because of an esoteric sex scene that beckons to tourists.
In fact, it has nothing to do with sex at all.
"The culture in Berlin is very much influenced by East Germany, where the free body culture - FKK - was practiced. It's something very basic that speaks of acceptance of the body, and treats nudity in a very natural way," explains Nirit.
"In addition to the fact that sunbathing topless is very acceptable, there are always beaches called "textile-free zones" where you can be completely naked, and you can go to the lake and see whole families naked on the water, at least up to a certain age. We don't even use the definition of nudism here because it's not Nudism is simply the culture. It's a really normal pastime here, going to the lake or sauna with friends or work colleagues, for example, and seeing them naked. Another interesting thing is that when the Germans go to the beach and want to change clothes - they just walk around for a moment, undress, change clothes and come on, We're going. There's no point."
Is there really no point?
Isn't it embarrassing to see naked strangers or sit naked with friends?
"Look, I remember that the first few times it was terribly strange to me, but here they grow up and live like this. You can't go into the sauna, for example, without taking your clothes off, it's considered impolite. Most of them are mixed, men and women, and no one does anything about it Big deal. So maybe you won't go with every friend or every colleague, and maybe you'll just sit in a corner and chat like that from a distance, without feeling the need to look at each other too much."
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It's impossible not to look.
"You look, of course you look. But in a respectful, not insulting, and disparaging way. You seem to see, but you don't look. Or you look but don't see, I don't know what to call it. I have never encountered inappropriate behavior on the part of a man. And in general, the situation In these places it is not sexual. Nudity, in itself, is not sexual. It is something intimate, it is something emotional, but sexual? No. What is sexual is the context of the nudity, what goes through your mind, how you were raised and raised and how your socialization made you think about nudity Anyone who sees nudity in any situation, like me - that's a problem."
I admit, it's almost unimaginable for me to imagine such openness and naturalness when it comes to the body and nudity in the public space, and between us - what's wrong with the way things look with us today.
That is, except for what is bad about the way things look with us today.
Perhaps it wouldn't hurt us to adopt a little of this openness, especially since it comes with some positive "side effects".
The first is related to the feeling of personal security in the public space, or in other words - to the fact that, according to Nirit, there is almost no phenomenon of voyeurism in the Berlin street.
"I got to thinking a lot about the fact that in Israel there was a time when there were a lot of voyeurs in Tel Aviv for apartments on the ground floors, and here it doesn't exist," she says.
"I don't even know how to say voyeur in German. Because after all, you don't have to be a voyeur here. You can go to the lake in the summer or even just to the park and there are people sunbathing naked, women without bras. It's just there. So the threshold of irritation here is Other".
There are no voyeurs, because the stimulation threshold is different.
Nirit has lived in Berlin for 17 years (photo: courtesy of the photographers)
There are those who will say, without naming names, that the higher the stimulus threshold, the more deviations there will be.
"What are deviations? The people here are much more open than in Israel. It's one hundred percent. There's nothing to talk about. It's both because they grow up like this and because there's no sense of the collective here in Israel. The Germans are very individualistic, they're afraid of a collective. It also has its drawbacks, they Very cold, distant, very different from us. But when you get here, all the conventions you have as an Israeli are broken. There are no conventions here. There are 20 ways to be in a relationship, 20 ways to go to the pool. Everything on its own and you can't make generalizations. No one dictates to you what To think, when to get married, with whom to sleep at night. There is no neighbor who looks after you and there is no mother and father who call and ask when you will get married, we want grandchildren. It is not acceptable to ask such questions in a German family. Everything here is very individual."
This individuality is what enables the second positive "side effect", which I find difficult not to make the context to the current climate on the Israeli street and hope that one day we will be able to adopt at least it - the "live and let live" attitude.
"You know," says Nirit, "sometimes I go to the mixed saunas and there are always Israelis who sit on the side and give a score to every woman who goes over the ass and the tit and the cellulite. I usually answer them, because they are rude in an abnormal way and I'm sure no one understands. No They behave like this here. There is something very beautiful here in the way they treat the naked, something very basic in the acceptance of the body, which allows everyone to accept themselves. You see people of all sizes and all shapes and everything is fine. No one stares at them, no one gives them a certificate An assessment of how they look or don't look, they just enjoy the beach or the sauna, without clothes. There is something very open here but also very unobtrusive. Do what you want, fly on your own, everything is fine. Let everyone do and be what suits them, As long as he respects and does not harm the other."
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