The Tiergarten (and the normalisation of nudity)

I’ve just got back to Warsaw after a couple of days in Berlin. I went there as a treat to myself: Berlin is my favourite European city, and the opportunity to spend some time exploring Kreuzberg, ticking off some more of the (excellent) museums, and drinking beer in the sunshine was too good to pass up.

On the first afternoon, I went for a walk in the Tiergarten, and was quickly reminded of another awesome thing about Berlin (and about Germany in general): they have an incredibly relaxed attitude to public nudity, at least in comparison to other countries. In the UK, a man lying naked in the park would be viewed as some sort of sex pest, but as I turned off one of the main avenues that runs through the Tiergarten, there he was.

And then there they were. Sprawled out on a lush green lawn, alone, in pairs, or even in small groups, the men and women of Berlin basked in the warm April sun, their clothes piled neatly beside them. No-one stared as they walked past, and there were no signs to warn tourists that they were about to enter an area where – gasp – it was ok to strip off and let it all hang out. It felt relaxed. It felt normal.

It’s not just Berlin, either. In Munich’s Englischer Garten, there’s a large area down by the stream where nudity is encouraged. In Hamburg, no-one bats an eyelid at the sight of someone casually disrobing outside their building. German saunas expect you to be naked during treatments – swimsuits are considered unhygienic and, frankly, a bit ridiculous, given what you’re there for.

There are restrictions, of course. A little digging reveals that, in fact, Munich has only very recently made public nudity fully legal, and has created six areas around the city specifically for that purpose. In most places, you will still raise eyebrows (and almost certainly a few complaints) if you stroll casually through the town centre in your birthday suit. However, my German friends inform me that as long as you’re not forcing your nudity onto other people in an aggressive or political way, you’re largely free to strip off in most big city parks, in the forest, or on both coastal and inland beaches.

I didn’t join the naked sunbathers in the Tiergarten – the hot weather had caught me slightly by surprise (and without suncream), so I was desperately trying to cover up every inch of my pale, freckled skin – but as I left them behind and headed for the Grosser Stern in the centre of the park, I thought about how good it felt to be in a country where, to some extent, nudity is considered normal. We tend to forget that the evolutionary reason for clothing is to protect us against the elements; modesty is a social (and religious) construct, as is body-shame. There is nothing wrong with wanting to cover up, but equally there’s nothing wrong with the desire to be naked, and the Germans (and Scandinavians) understand that better than most. They realise that nudity doesn’t have to be sexual – one you acknowledge that, the reasons for criminalising it begin to seem mildly ridiculous.

Nudity doesn’t have to be sexual, but I’m pretty sure that in addition to creating a more open and tolerant environment, a relaxation in nudity laws (or in attitudes towards nudity) would have a positive impact on our sex lives. That’s not rocket science, of course: the more comfortable we are with our bodies, and with the idea of bodies in general, the better we’re likely to be in bed.

I was 15 the first time I went naked in public. It was on a beach in France, in the middle of a family holiday; on our first day there, I’d noticed that a lot of the bathers didn’t bother with swimsuits, either in the sea or on the sand, so the next morning I sneaked off the campsite, heart thumping in my chest, and went down to the beach to join them. I don’t really know why I did it, except that I was curious, and felt liberated by the time away from school and my hometown, where I was negotiating the most awkward phase of pubescent change, and couldn’t imagine being naked in front of anyone. On the beach, away from my family, and even further away from the girls (and boys) at school, it was different. I only stayed down there for 20 minutes or so, but as I walked along the sand, self-conscious at first and sort-of proud by the time I finished, I realised some pretty important things about myself and my body – things I’d forget many times over the years, of course, but which at the time made me feel a lot better about life.

It was also the first time I really thought about nudity. When I was a kid, they used to draw the big, heavy curtain across the viewing gallery windows at the swimming pool before the weekly naturist session, so I’d been conditioned to view it as something that shouldn’t be public – something to hide away and protect people from. When I took my clothes off down on the beach, all that went away somehow. Suddenly naturists weren’t weird or creepy or perverted – they were just people who enjoyed being naked. If French families in their shorts, t-shirts, bikinis and swimming trunks could relax on the beach next to their naked compatriots, rather than shunting them off to a separate, secluded stretch of sand, maybe people who enjoyed being naked shouldn’t be defined by that at all.

I thought about most of that much later. At the time, and in the immediate aftermath, I was mainly just incredibly horny. Not at the sight of other naked people – it was more the knowledge that they could see me. It was a little embarrassing getting hard in public, but no-one seemed to care, and that felt amazing too. I mean, I was 15, so I did a lot of wanking on that holiday anyway, but for about 48 hours after my trip to the beach I could barely keep my hand off my cock. That was mainly the novelty, I think, mixed in with the first real emergence of the exhibitionism I wrote about the other day.

In Berlin, and in other places where I’ve seen people relaxing naked, with no fear of being stigmatised or shamed for it, I’ve always felt very happy, but I’ve also usually gone away with a bit of a buzz between my legs. Maybe that’s because I grew up in a country where public nudity was considered taboo, so it still carries with it that thrill of the forbidden. If so (and as much as I’d like to have my cake and eat it), the unselfish part of me would like to see that fade with time: yes, being bad will always be hot, but as long as taking your clothes off in public continues to push that button, it will be a sign that as a society we’re still not ok with something that ought to be seen as perfectly normal.