Women can swim and sunbathe topless in the public pools of the famous Berlin. Such permission was issued by the liberal authorities of the capital of Germany to equalize the rights of men and women. The decision will come into force shortly.
According to Bild, back in December 2022, 33-year-old Lotte Mies defied existing rules and filed a complaint with a Berlin court that she was kicked out of the pool area – the woman was sunbathing bare-chested. The vacationer was outraged by gender inequality and went to court, stating the oppression and the need to desexualize the upper part of the female body.
Not surprisingly, the liberal court sided with her – now women no longer have to cover their chests when swimming and sunbathing in public pools. As a result, Berliner Bäderbetriebe, the manager of Berlin’s public swimming pools, made appropriate changes to its rules regarding clothing, leaving only the requirement for visitors to cover the primary genitals.
“In the future, topless swimming should also be possible for women… Now it is important that the rule is applied consistently and that there are no more such bans,” the city’s equality ombudsman said.
The Germans, who support equality in the basin, highly appreciated the efforts of the Berlin authorities. So, 25-year-old Katharina Mittler, a sports student from the Berlin district of Mitte, was pleased with the decision and called this step an “equal rights” measure: “We don’t need to be sexualized simply because we are women.”
However, Berlin is not the first to take such a step. Last summer, Göttingen in Lower Saxony and Siegen in North Rhine-Westphalia already allowed women to swim in public pools uncovered, following a “free body culture”. Rules were also changed in the Lower Saxon capital of Hannover, requiring that only the “primary sex organs” be covered “in the wet zone” of the municipal baths.