to resent British 'body issues'

[Huppopapa]

Holidaying in a thermal spa in Poland, I've noticed that no-one - absolutely no-one - feels the need to disguise what their bodies look like. Yes there are sleek young women and toned young men in profusion but it didn't take long for us to realise that they were no more showing off than anyone else. Because in fact no-one was showing off: they were just having a swim or a sunbathe.
We have seen several women breastfeeding - and to paraphrase Pope Francis, why the Hell shouldn't we - and I can't remember the last time in the UK I have been in a swimming pool with people with physical disabilities. Three people with dwarfism weren't merely having a therapeutic dip, but joining in with everyone else on the slides and other play equipment. I can hear the British teeth-sucking from here.
We went to a luxury Greek resort run by a British company in 2015 and the staff, as a joke, would parp a horn if a man wore Speedos on the beach. It seemed mildly amusing at the time but in truth it's just another example of us as a nation telling other people how they should behave.
I have two daughters so feel that I at a state of constant vigilance not to allow them to become obsessed with their appearance. The experience of me being here makes me wonder whether the problem is their knowledge that other British people are obsessed with their appearance. I do wish people would just buzz off and leave them alone to do whatever they wish to do, dressed however they like.

When I was in Africa I realised how different it was not to be bombarded with images of female models. Even at the airports and shopping malls, there were precious few reminders of how ordinary women can't match up to stick thin beautiful young women. It was fantastic. Thank you OP for talking about this.

I completely agree. I've been sniggered at by grown women for using the open area of the womens' changing room for changing in.
DH and I like going to spas together, it's so much more natural and better outside Britain where one must be naked.

Oh, and where is this spa? (Thinking of birthday plans).

I agree with this. We live in south Germany where it is boiling in the summer and there are lots of outdoor pools. I am very happy to be able to say that those pools are full of people in every shape and size. It's just normal.

Hotel Bania, Dashper. Only blimmin geothermally heated so you can still swim when it's snowing! No English spoken apart from the staff. It shouldn't matter but makes entertaining children full time...

Couldn't agree more.

I am in the US, in a suburb with two outdoor public pools that are heaving with people trying to cool off most days in the summer. Again, people of all shapes and sizes and abilities are welcome (there are chair lifts and aquatic wheelchairs available to allow wheelchair-using patrons or people who might use a motorised shopping trolley to enjoy the water). Women breastfeed, nobody bats an eye. Men turn up in Speedos - ...

YABU
I swim in the uk with all sorts, so think you are talking nonsense.
One lady in my class has only one breast and is blind, someone else only had one leg.
Every week there is a group of adults with SN come with their carers to the public swim while my lesson is on.

Bit of an odd thread. We've gone from magazines to naturism to the US (where surely a lot of the plastic surgery originates from).

At the risk of stating the obvious people in the UK don't wander round in swimsuits because it's too cold most of the time so we have no outdoor swimming pools. It therefore becomes more of an issue when they do and people in warmer places are more used to it.

So I think yabu

There was a thread on here just yesterday asking how old is too old for a bikini. I didn't read it but there are definitely body hang ups in the UK

YANBU?
Just returning from France. I was very uncomfortable at the idea of wearing a bikini. I'm overweight and at size 18 just couldn't face not wearing a one pice swimming costume.
And so are a hell of a lot of women here who don't even dare being with a swimming costume on the beach.

Arriving in France and London and behold, I was one of the very few women with a one pice swimmining costume, everyone else was wearing a bikini, incl women who were just as overweight as me...

The story about the speedo is awful and I would have had a word with the hotel TBH.
Since when is it ok to share some one, men or women, about what they are wearing??

Thinking about my local pool and the pool at me gym, i would disagree.

There are people of all sizes, people who have disabilities etc. No one cares tbh.

My mum and sil are disabled and have never felt they couldnt/shouldnt swim. I used to be a size 20. I have never felt i cant wear a swimming suit. Here or abroad.

Some people have had this experience, but its not everyones experience of the uk. I have also travelled across europe and the US. Never felt like my size was issue.

This is a really interesting observation. I am not sure how to say what i think- not sure what I think- but I think the OPs comments about how we police the body and behaviour of others is really interesting.

I have certainly felt that in my life. (I was telling someone just the other day how a guest we had over the summer took it upon herself to try and teach me how to eat 'properly' because I have put on alot of weight.)

Something for me to think about anyway.

There are always people with disabilities in my pool. It is really well equipped though, with a floor that can be flattened and ample hoists and kit to support people getting in and out. I'm not sure that older pools are as accessible. (The movable floor thing was hailed as A Big Deal when the pool was built).

Well if it comes down to individual experience (which is never a substitute for thinking about general principles) I live locally to a services rehabilitation unit. After several years of locals increasingly complaining about injured servicemen and women using the pool, someone set up what turned out to be a hugely successful charity with the principal objective of allowing them to swim without being stared at or disapproved of.
The fact that there might be an inclusive class somewhere in Britain does not mean that as a nation we are not cruising fast into a couple of generations of people who have entirely unnecessary and corrosive hang-ups about their bodies. I'm astonished anyone should think that this is not an issue for us as a nation.

I think hula I get a bit tired of the 'its better abroad' crap that is constantly pedaled on MN. The example you give is wrong, agreed and disablist attitudes need to be challenged generally not just in relation to body image. I think it goes a lot deeper than that tbh.

I can see what you're saying OP, and I think that we as a nation have long been taught that we should cover up, not flaunt ourselves etc etc. A combination of our puritan past, the British loathing of anyone 'showing off' and the media obsession with perfection. But thankfully most Brits are ok with getting a costume on at the beach or in a pool in the UK (never been on a beach holiday abroad so couldn't comment on what we do elsewhere). But one thing we do seem to have an issue with is nakedness. We don't like getting changed in front of others, we don't generally like people to be naked in public (they are either a joke - a streaker - or sinister - a flasher). I have been to the amazing thermal swimming pool in Reykjavik and we had to shower thoroughly naked first in the communal showers. Yes I was apprehensive but it was strangely liberating to realise actually no one have a shit, kids included. I think we have a long way to go before we are ok about being naked in a more public place. Not sure how much I want that to happen though, I'm too British!! And it's too bloody cold most of the time!

Of course you only saw the people at the spa who were happy to go around wearing very little, the ones with body issues may well have stayed in their rooms, or not gone at all. I'm sure such people exist in Poland.

The speedos thing persists. I was on a cruise earlier this month, and the cruise director gave a gentle but numerous message effectively saying the same: gents if you look down and can't see your Speedos, you shouldn't be wearing them.

The pools were largely populated with unsupervised children, ranging from 8yos to teenagers, old enough to do their own thing. The last thing I would want them to be exposed to would be the visible outline of a grown man's penis all day.

What the fuck are you talking about?'teeth sucking' because a disabled person is using the pool? I have never seen that and I see plenty of disabled people enjoying the pool.
I agree that we shouldn't be so hung up on looking a certain way but I'm fucking sick of posts on here about 'British attitudes' and how much more enlightened the rest of Europe is

I don't know if it's my Britishness or just my character, but at 5 foot 6 and a size 10/12 I have given up looking for new clothes as I feel like a blimp, and a bikini is really just out of the question! Friends I have from other countries don't seem to have this hang up at all. Of course it could all be personality or bluster and nothing to do with nationality!

TOTALLY AGREE!!!!

People complaining about disabled people using facilities are dicks.

Do you really think these dick only exist in the UK?

That theres no disablism in mainland Europe? Really?

I do find the British views on nakedness and bikinis odd. In Tenerife a few weeks ago, all sorts of sizes of men and women. I don't care what they wear.