Germany
Milan Obradovic
Americans are such prudes, said Milan Obradovic in the German magazine Stern. As a German expatriate living in Los Angeles, I go to the beach regularly. But God forbid I should wear a normal men’s bathing suit. In the U.S., any garment tight enough “to show the faintest outline of male genitalia” is completely unacceptable. Men wear knee-length trunks lined with an extra panty to make doubly sure that their manhood is suitably restrained and camouflaged. The get-up “appears to be neither comfortable nor hygienic, not to mention utterly uncool.” But it’s a requirement in this “puritanical” country. Even women have to cover up. Going topless “can be punished with a steep fine or even arrest.” The prohibition is particularly odd when you consider that, in obesity-plagued America, many men have breasts just as large as women’s, yet those ugly saggers are on proud display while the women’s must be hidden. To a European, the “moral standards of the American majority” are a mystery—and a pity.
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