Women in Berlin will soon be able to go topless in the city’s public swimming pools, just like men, the Berlin state government said on Thursday.
The new bathroom rules that allow everyone to go swimming without covering their torso follow a discrimination complaint from a woman who was not allowed to go topless in a pool in the capital.
The woman, whose identity was not released, turned to the ombudsman’s office of the Senate for equal treatment to demand that women, like men, be able to swim topless, the Berlin Senate for Justice, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination said in a written statement.
In reaction to the complaint and the ombudsman’s involvement in the case, the Berliner Baederbetriebe, which manages the city’s public swimming pools, decided to change its dress code, according to the statement.
“The ombudsman’s office warmly welcomes the decision of the Baederbetriebe, because it establishes the equal rights for all Berliners, whether male, female or non-binary, and because it also creates legal certainty for the staff of the Baederbetriebe,” said Doris Liebscher, the head of the ombudsman’s office.
In the past, women who bared their breasts in Berlin pools were asked to cover up or get out of the pool, and were sometimes forbidden to return.
“It is now important that the regulation is applied consistently and that no further expulsions or home bans are issued,” Liebscher said.
It wasn’t immediately clear when would they apply exactly the new bathroom rules.
In Germany, freedom also means being naked
Germans love to get naked. They’ve been stripping in public for over a century, when the first naturalists rebelled against the filth of industrialization and after the general massacre of the First World War.
“The culture of the free body”which basically means having the whole body exposed for bathing in water or sunbathing (sometimes while exercising), has become the biggest slogan for those who advocate a healthy and harmonious lifestyle as an antidote to destructive modernity.
Germans even love to tell an anecdote about the former chancellor Angela Merkel. According to what they say, the night the Berlin Wall fell, the politician who grew up in East Germany decided to go to her weekly appointment in a sauna before crossing to the West.
Maybe it’s because in Germany the act of stripping has a lot to do with fighting repression.
“It’s all about freedom,” he told The New York Times John C. Kornbluma former US ambassador to Germany who has lived there on and off since the 1960s (and remembers being yelled at by a naked German because he hadn’t removed his bathing suit before entering a hot tub).
“Germans are afraid of freedom and yearn for it at the same time,” Kornblum said. “The ideas of hierarchy and following the rules are so ingrained that many consider public disagreement on social or political issues unthinkable. When people walk naked on a beach they get a dose of feeling rebellious.”
The Nazis tried to eliminate nudismJust like the communist regime. They didn’t make it.
(With information from AP)
Keep reading:
In Germany, freedom also means being naked
Women, abortion, orgasms and nudism in East Germany, the other side of social control of public life
Source-www.infobae.com