Women can swim topless in public pools, says Berlin
Women have won the right to swim and sunbathe topless in Berlin’s public pools after a ban was challenged on gender equality grounds.
Authorities said the move “establishes equal rights for all Berliners whether male, female or non-binary” because women will now be able to wear similar attire to men.
“Topless swimming should also be possible for female people or for people with female breasts in the future,” the city’s equality Ombudsman said.
The decision comes after legal action brought by a woman who was thrown out of a pool for sunbathing topless.
In December Lotte Mies, 33, was ordered to cover up at an indoor pool in Berlin after going topless.
“The police officer asked me what gender I identify with. When I said ‘female’, it meant that I had to wear a top,” she told the Bild newspaper.
Ms Mies made a complaint to Berlin’s equality watchdog, which said it was discrimination to prevent women from going topless if they chose.
The capital’s rules for public pools only insist that swimming costumes cover the genitals, the watchdog said.
‘Equal rights for everyone’
Berlin’s swimming pool operator, the Berliner Bäderbetriebe, issued a clarification that this rule applied to all swimmers, regardless of their gender.
“Now it is important that the regulation is applied consistently and that no more expulsions or house bans are issued,” said Doris Liebscher, the head of the Ombudsman’s office.
Katharina Mittler, 25, a sports student from the Mitte area of Berlin said, “That’s equal rights for everyone.
“We don’t have to be sexualised just because we’re women. I would also go topless in an indoor pool myself. I don’t have a problem with that,” she said.
Attitudes towards public nudity in Germany are considerably more liberal than in the UK with nakedness viewed as healthy in certain contexts.
The Freikörperkultur - free body culture - remains influential and Germans are comfortable with disrobing in parks and saunas in a way most Britons are not.
But there have been a string of wrangles across Germany over to what extent that applies to municipal swimming baths.
Göttingen in Lower Saxony and Siegen in North Rhine Westphalia allowed women to swim topless last summer.
