AIBU to think men should keep their shirts on in public places however hot it is?

[catwalker]

-especially the ones with fat, hairy stomachs. Unless, of course, they are in their own garden or on the beach. Went to a cricket match the other day and one of the dads sat next to me was topless. He had the most enormous hairy stomach and very small shorts so that when he was sitting down you couldn't see the shorts for his overhanging gut and it looked like he was naked. I couldn't bear to look in his direction - put me off my picnic. I see blokes wandering round the local shopping centre with no top on too - even if they're fit looking it still makes me feel uncomfortable.

My DP gets his top off at the first sign of sun. I don't mind it on holiday but I don't think it's a great look walking round the streets of London.

So, IMO YANBU

Well said mamamila!

i wouldn't do it walking around town or through shops etc. but i definitely do it around the park or if i just have to walk down to the newsagent at the end of my road.

my car got delivered back to me by a sweaty shirtless bloke yesterday - which means he had been sitting on my mateiral seats sweating....yuk.

Much as men with no shirts on disturbs me...women with no bra on is equally icky. Especially on the school run.

why thankyou plantsitter

had picnic in park again earlier and we were wiling with all our might for the group of fit young lads nearby to remove their shirts for their frizbee game, ahh and happily they obliged! love the fashion for low low slung shorts...

also smiled to see old guy helping remove his wife's thick support sock things so she could enjoy the feel of grass on her toes

lovely summer days

Ooooh Goddess, yuk - [barf emoticon]

oh dear - I did the school run with no bra on yesterday (as it was so damn hot)and it was definitely a bad idea, having caught sight of my sagginess in the mirror

You are all a bit middle class and neurotic really.

YAsoooooooooooooooNBU! I fecking hate this. Regardless of size, tone or colour, if you're not in the park then bloody cover up.

Yes it's hot, but a long-sleeved white shirt will do a lot more to keep you cool than naked pink flesh will.

I haven't even NOTICED

But I come from a family with lots of fat hairy men who are quite comfortable with whipping off their tops

I find it all a bit weird - why do people find it repellent? I agree that if men were saying this about their wives it would be appalling.

Are women allowed to get fat, but not men?

All this stuff about socially-acceptable blah blah is rubbish. YOU DON'T LIKE FAT PEOPLE. ADMIT IT.

Although I would say, that having had much experience, I prefer the nice solid fat tummy of a hairy man rather than the squishy fat tummy of a woman (hairy or not). So there. Bring it on.

Big article in the Times saturday on this.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/giles_coren/article6440468.ece

It's not just MNs!!

I love this thread! very funny but also quite philosophically interesting.

First of all OP, I can see where you are coming from, especially with the example you gave, and in those circumstances I would have felt uncomfortable too. But then there is Brightongirl who is "totally spoilt with the number of half naked, handsome, toned men that run past me in the park." [swoon] Very jealous! So maybe I can't help being a little bit more for it when the guys are hot. But reading through this I can see that makes me a bit superficial. In general though, I think YABU, and I love mamamila's comment: "it feels summery and the cheerfulness is infectious"

Duchesse - You say: it's "to do with respecting social mores that have evolved over many millenia...nudity in public, and more particularly in inappropriate places...is not socially acceptable because it represents way too much inappropriate intimacy. If you decide to ignore the sensibilities of others and wander around semi-naked despite social conventions, that makes you a little anti-social"

Yes social mores have evolved...from the 19th century when it was inappropriate and sexually overt for a woman to show her ankles... People living then would be more shocked by a knee length skirt and a short sleeved blouse than we are by a topless man. They would have talked about social convention too...

What makes you think that the evolution has finished? It continues, things gain social acceptance by becoming the norm over a period of time.

On the other hand, living side by side with a large Muslim community I am often conscious of how I must appear to them in, for example, a vest top and tight jeans, and I realise that what we consider to be social evolution, others might see as social disintegration.

Having said that, I'm looking at the grey sky right now, really looking forward to the next hot day, when I can strip off in the garden and feel those warm rays making my body glow, making me feel all woozy and blissful... and if I see a few young lads playing football shirtless in the park, well I wont be complaining

I really dislike it when men take their shirts off - lets face it, hardly any of them have a body worth showing off and it's not good for them either - I wonder what the skin cancer rate among builders is like? And I also dislike women wearing skimpy shorts and sleeveless tops - especially when they get on trains. Even though the trains I use are air-conditioned, you get such a smell of flesh - it makes me retch sometimes. You'd actually be cooler if you wore a short sleeved top and a skirt.

No no, don't stop 'em

Not if they have tops like this