Tis the Season...for Naked Babies

Fa la la la la la la la laaaaa!  I've decided to touch a bit here and there on some of the cultural differences that we've observed over the past year or so.  And since it's our second Summer here, I'm going to dive head-first into the most glaringly obvious cultural difference (for anyone in the US not living in a nudist colony) for this time of year: Nudity.  It's everywhere. And it's actually not shocking or offensive.

To start with the basics, people in Vienna, for the most part, live outside their homes.  They work, they eat out and when there's free time--they go out...to the park, the pub, a performance or a club...doesn't matter.  They're out there, living their lives in public.  (I realize I'm leaving out the portion of society that sits at home with their cats, smoking cigarettes and complaining about the neighbors, but they're probably naked too.) Understandably, when the weather turns warm, people flock to the park and the beach--bodies dotting every bit of green in the city.  And a lot of them are naked--or at least close enough for the casual observer.

Now, there are specified areas in parts of the city (usually along the river) that are designated as nude/FKK (Freikörperkultur or basically 'free body culture').  I understand this concept is something that is cause for a lot of giggles from us Yanks, but from what I've seen (and, believe me--it was enough) nude beaches here are mostly a lot of old, wrinkled, leathery-tanned people standing around casually talking to each other like they're not totally naked.  If that didn't pour ice water on any assumptions that nude beaches are sexy, I don't know what will.  But, honestly, there are no strict rules for keeping the nudity in it's place here.

For starters, a lot of beaches don't have public changing rooms--you either have to change in a cramped bathroom stall or rent a cabinet for yourself.  And from what I can tell, most people just chose to change in public.  This is not a big deal; one either strategically covers themselves with a towel or goes Full Monty without a care in the world.  Such is life.  So, it becomes quite commonplace to walk amongst people in various stages of dress at the beach.  And that is just a small hop, skip and a jump from not really minding the grandma who couldn't bring herself to go bathing suit shopping, the mama who wants easy access to nurse her kids or really anyone who just wants to avoid tan lines.  In the end, it doesn't matter why--once you've seen enough (I cannot stress enough the importance of the word) *normal* naked bodies, that giggly immature adolescent part of one's brain seems to just give up and accept that this is what normal people look like naked and it's actually not a big deal.

Maybe it's because kids here start out this way--naked--and not just the natural way they entered the world, but it extends well into kid-dom.  Nudity is totally acceptable. These kids are raised in a city boasting beautiful nude figures on nearly every building.  There is nudity around the corner at the neighborhood fountain, plastered about town on advertisements, and kids, themselves, frolic around naked as the day they were born as long as the weather calls for it.  When there are mud and sand pits at every playground in the city and a bevy of water-filled activities to boot, it becomes commonplace for a mom to forgo schlepping around a spare set of clothes and a wet bag in favor of letting the kids gad about as nature intended.  It has actually taken me a full year to realize this and it makes an incredible amount of sense when basically every day is spent letting your kids get good and dirty.

And that's really all there is to it.  The nude form, culturally, is considered normal.  Children are raised by parents who consider it normal.  They play with children who also consider it normal, and grow into adults who are able to walk past a topless woman without batting an eye.  In the end it nearly makes me weep that nursing women in the US are subject to so much scrutiny when just across the ocean there is a culture that quite simply has made a non-issue of bare skin.

But there you have it:  culture.

And this is one aspect you'll certainly hear me telling jokes about, but never actually complaining.  The world, in my mind, could do with a bit more Freikörperkultur.