GERMANY. Berlin: A rule change allowing all women, including visiting female tourists, the freedom to swim topless in the city was unintentionally sparked when a lifeguard requested police to remove Lotte Mies for bathing topless at her local indoor swimming pool in Berlin.
After two women, including Mies, complained about being excluded from or barred from the city’s pools for failing to cover up and demanded the same rights as their male counterparts when bathing “oben-ohne” (topless), the decision was made to change the dress code for swimming in the capital of Germany.
Mies, who was born in Berlin and is now 33, said she was treated unfairly when he was turned away from a topless pool in Kaulsdorf in December. The 33-year-old claimed she requested approval to bathe topless via email in advance. Staff ordered Mies to leave the pool after she showed up topless.
Mies says that even though she said that the policy only allowed “commercial bathing suits” and that she was therefore allowed, police were called and the lifeguard who had given her the go-ahead to use the pool was forced to stop her.
In Berlin in 2021, Gabrielle Lebreton, a Frenchwoman, was asked to leave a water park because she wouldn’t cover her breasts while sunbathing. This action is in response to that. Women rode bikes topless and men wore bras as a protest against the double standard under the banner “no nipple is free until all nipples are free.”
Mies liked that the rule was changed, but he said that there was still a lot of work to do to make sure that people of all genders had the same rights.
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