So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Fading Fast]

Auto insurance. Why they make such a hassle of it is beyond me; they made a change and started using Transunion to confirm identities of people trying to pay online. I know a couple people who have changed insurers because of this, and I've considered it myself.

Wow, that seems crazy as you are only paying a bill on line. To be sure, I can see some "know your customer" responsibility - laws and regulations have consequences (Dodds Franks came out of the 2007 financial crisis and increased KWC on all financial institutions) - but what they put you through seems way over the top. I don't own a car, but I do pay my homeowners on line and they required nothing arduous at all to set that up.

 

[Edward]

"arte-channel french movies"

Is that what they call them in
Deutschland ?

Nah, whole different beast. Unlike the Anglo-American world, mainland Europeans by and large have never conflated nudity and sexuality to anything like the same degree; in Germany, a picture of a naked person is just someone not wearing any clothes; in England, it's porn. Germans tend to be bemused by the 'Paged 3' concept, but for very different reasons than US folks, in my experience!

 

[Lean'n'mean]

"arte-channel french movies"

Is that what they call them in
Deutschland ?

'arte' is a Franco-German TV channel. It used to be very high brow & mostly watched by left wing intellectuals but pre digital, it was one of the only channels that offered movies in their original languages. ( as opposed to dubbed)
As for the notorious nudity & sex in French films, it all seems rather tame now compared to modern TV shows & the net.

 

[Fading Fast]

Nah, whole different beast. Unlike the Anglo-American world, mainland Europeans by and large have never conflated nudity and sexuality to anything like the same degree; in Germany, a picture of a naked person is just someone not wearing any clothes; in England, it's porn. Germans tend to be bemused by the 'Paged 3' concept, but for very different reasons than US folks, in my experience!

As someone who has watched way too many documentaries on the Third Reich / Germany in the '20s - '40s, I've noticed just what you say. You'll see film clips of naked or nearly naked boys / girls (some well into their teens) doing sports or calisthenic without it seeming odd, off or sexual - it just is. That said, and I'm doing this from memory so maybe I'm wrong, the boys and girls in these situations are separate.

 

[GHT]

'arte' is a Franco-German TV channel. It used to be very high brow & mostly watched by left wing intellectuals but pre digital, it was one of the only channels that offered movies in their original languages. ( as opposed to dubbed)
As for the notorious nudity & sex in French films, it all seems rather tame now compared to modern TV shows & the net.

If you ever get the chance, watch La Cage aux Folles in the original French, even if you don't speak the language. Comic timing at it's best. The remake in English, as in The Birdcage, comes nowhere near.

 

[Ticklishchap]

As someone who has watched way too many documentaries on the Third Reich / Germany in the '20s - '40s, I've noticed just what you say. You'll see film clips of naked or nearly naked boys / girls (some well into their teens) doing sports or calisthenic without it seeming odd, off or sexual - it just is. That said, and I'm doing this from memory so maybe I'm wrong, the boys and girls in these situations are separate.

In the Leni Riefenstahl movie, I can only remember the young men, for some reason, and they were definitely in a single-sex group. They were mostly around college student age if I remember. It's a strange, disturbing film but fascinating as a historical document.
Gender neutral Nazis - now that really does sound like a post-modern nightmare!
There were various German youth groups in the early C20 through the Weimar era which were based on 'getting back to nature', running naked through the forest etc. and I think they were mixed sex or 'gender neutral'. Some of them were proto-Nazi, others more like forerunners of the Green movement with a vague racial undertone. Then there is the iconic Nazi image of the Aryan girl with plaits with the collecting tin, who looks as if she was supplied by Feminist Central. [The connection is more than superficial as there are strong connections between early C20 feminism and racial eugenics.]
Leni Riefenstahl's work developed after World War 2 when she went to Sudan and filmed the men in the Nuba mountains engaged in their ancient art of wrestling. She compensated for her Nazi arthouse phase in many ways by helping to preserve the distinctive black African culture of the Nuba.

 

[Ticklishchap]

If you ever get the chance, watch La Cage aux Folles in the original French, even if you don't speak the language. Comic timing at it's best. The remake in English, as in The Birdcage, comes nowhere near.

Saw it in 1984 when I was spending a month in San Francisco, starring Keith Michell. We went backstage afterwards because one of my friends knew him. He showed me pictures of himself with his wife and daughters riding the Berkshire countryside, which seemed incongruous after Albin.

 

[HanauMan]

As someone who has watched way too many documentaries on the Third Reich / Germany in the '20s - '40s, I've noticed just what you say. You'll see film clips of naked or nearly naked boys / girls (some well into their teens) doing sports or calisthenic without it seeming odd, off or sexual - it just is. That said, and I'm doing this from memory so maybe I'm wrong, the boys and girls in these situations are separate.

The US Army 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt / Germany had a huge mural in the entrance staircase which depicted nude Aryan youths in a classical setting. I was in my teens and loved looking at the mural. The old hospital is the American Consulate these days and the mural no longer exists (I asked a employee about it).

 

[LizzieMaine]

The idealization of the "perfect Aryan physical form" was very much a key tenet of Nazi "folkish" beliefs. Which is pretty funny when you consider that Adolf himself was short, pot-bellied, and flatulent.

 

[Fading Fast]

The idealization of the "perfect Aryan physical form" was very much a key tenet of Nazi "folkish" beliefs. Which is pretty funny when you consider that Adolf himself was short, pot-bellied, and flatulent.

And Goebbels had a club foot while Goring looked like he ate one of those Panzer tanks. The irony of the look of the leadership and its ideal couldn't have been missed, but also, probably is related to the leadership's insecurities and longings.

My absolute "favorite" is the purely circumstantial evidence that Hitler may have been part Jewish as that takes this very sad irony to a much higher level.

 

[Edward]

As someone who has watched way too many documentaries on the Third Reich / Germany in the '20s - '40s, I've noticed just what you say. You'll see film clips of naked or nearly naked boys / girls (some well into their teens) doing sports or calisthenic without it seeming odd, off or sexual - it just is. That said, and I'm doing this from memory so maybe I'm wrong, the boys and girls in these situations are separate.

I know even into the nineties Sweden maintained a tradition of outdoor swimming pools where men and women swam naked, but segregated on gender lines. Even that n the UK would be viewed differently - there, it's just bodies; here, you'd have all sorts of gay subtexts being read into it, mostly by fairly unpleasant types (in particular in relation to the women, whom said unpleasant types both hate and fetishise in equal measure).

If you ever get the chance, watch La Cage aux Folles in the original French, even if you don't speak the language. Comic timing at it's best. The remake in English, as in The Birdcage, comes nowhere near.

Ever the case with remakes. Though that said, Nathan Lane was outstanding in the equivalent of the Albin role. Transferring the action to the US instead of 1970s France was also clever in that it was a story that wouldn't really have worked set in Europe in the 90s.

The idealization of the "perfect Aryan physical form" was very much a key tenet of Nazi "folkish" beliefs. Which is pretty funny when you consider that Adolf himself was short, pot-bellied, and flatulent.

Were any of the top Nazis even vaguely, remotely, a tiny bit like the Aryan ideal? None that spring to mind for me...

And Goebbels had a club foot while Goring looked like he ate one of those Panzer tanks. The irony of the look of the leadership and its ideal couldn't have been missed, but also, probably is related to the leadership's insecurities and longings.

My mother still insists that Goering smoked a lot of weed, which imbalanced his hormones and was causing him to "turn into a woman". She says the same of Brian Jones....

My absolute "favorite" is the purely circumstantial evidence that Hitler may have been part Jewish as that takes this very sad irony to a much higher level.

Certainly if that evidence is indeed true, he was as much a Jew as a marked proportion of those who only discovered their Jewishness when they were thrown into a camp - thanks to the abuse of census data via counting machines leased from IBM.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maybe Baldur von Schirach, the head of the Hitler Youth. But otherwise the whole lot of them remind me of the kind of pimply-faced losers who used to sit in the back of study hall huffing glue out of a paper bag.

 

[HanauMan]

Reinhard Heydrich certainly had an Aryan physique and a fierce intellect.

 

[sheeplady]

The college I went to as an undergrad used to have the pool gender segregated by time slot, and many swam naked... up until the (early) 1980s. In fact, naked swimming was one of the things most often pined about when I went to alumni events in late 90s.

I do think they still had open swim (both genders) and then separate men's and women's open swim when I went there... but no nakedness.

 

[Ticklishchap]

When I lived in North London I often enjoyed swimming in the Men's Pond at Highgate. Now I live South of the River it's too far away. There are three ponds, one all-male, one all-female and the other mixed. It's a system that works really well. Now, in its (non)wisdom, the Corporation of London has decided that both of the single-sex ponds should admit 'travesti' (to use the operatic term), even those who still have the physical attributes of the opposite gender. Thus, ex-males or males 'identifying' as female can go to the women's pond and ex-females or females 'identifying' as male ('neo-males'?) can go to the men's pond. Many women have expressed their concerns, quite understandably, and many of the men are unhappy with it as well, as I would be if I were still a regular swimmer there. It's a bizarre and doctrinaire attack on privacy and personal space.

This is supposed to be a sounding-off platform (things that tick you off) so I will say that it's an indictment of our times that something that works incredibly well should be undermined in this way. The Men's Pond was a great example of tolerance with (for example) gay men and straight (and devout) Haredi Jewish men happily co-existing and accepting each other. Presumably it was similar for the women - and there is a mixed pond 'option' anyway so why can't the travesti simply go there?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

The college I went to as an undergrad used to have the pool gender segregated by time slot, and many swam naked... up until the (early) 1980s. In fact, naked swimming was one of the things most often pined about when I went to alumni events in late 90s.

The local NPR station (WBEZ) did a segment on boys swimming naked during PE at Chicago high schools in the past. From what they gathered, it was meant to instill hygiene principals in young men. However these essentially boys would be embarrassed by their own bodies & one of the things that started to happen was hooligans would throw broken glass bottles into the pool, which meant the pool had to be drained completely. The glass throwing would happen 3 or 4 times in a row. The naked swimming classes lasted as late as the 80's at some schools.

Here is a link to the article.
https://www.wbez.org/shows/curious-...-schools/c9a3a9e2-6ae3-404b-80e5-0c4bf4d5a0be

 

[2jakes]

About the only instance I can relate to
first being naked was in high school during P.E. period in the showers.

It was a strange feeling taking off
my clothes in front of other people.
But everyone was doing it and no
big deal was made about it.
And there was always someone with a
towel who would snap you with it in
the cheeks if you weren't careful.

Hardly went to public swimming pools.
Not sure why.
I mostly went to the lake or river nearby.
And we mostly kept our underwear on
when swimming.
Being naked was no big deal or frowned.
We just didn't do it .

 

[PeterGunnLives]

Maybe this is gross, but I never showered after gym class, because I didn't want to be completely disrobed in front of people. I just went to a corner of the locker room and changed back to my normal clothes and hoped nobody would notice.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Nah, whole different beast. Unlike the Anglo-American world, mainland Europeans by and large have never conflated nudity and sexuality to anything like the same degree; in Germany, a picture of a naked person is just someone not wearing any clothes; in England, it's porn. Germans tend to be bemused by the 'Paged 3' concept, but for very different reasons than US folks, in my experience!

Like the old saying goes..."nude" means you got no clothes on..."nekkid" means you got no clothes on and you're up to something!

 

[Edward]

When I lived in North London I often enjoyed swimming in the Men's Pond at Highgate. Now I live South of the River it's too far away. There are three ponds, one all-male, one all-female and the other mixed. It's a system that works really well. Now, in its (non)wisdom, the Corporation of London has decided that both of the single-sex ponds should admit 'travesti' (to use the operatic term), even those who still have the physical attributes of the opposite gender. Thus, ex-males or males 'identifying' as female can go to the women's pond and ex-females or females 'identifying' as male ('neo-males'?) can go to the men's pond. Many women have expressed their concerns, quite understandably, and many of the men are unhappy with it as well, as I would be if I were still a regular swimmer there. It's a bizarre and doctrinaire attack on privacy and personal space.

This is supposed to be a sounding-off platform (things that tick you off) so I will say that it's an indictment of our times that something that works incredibly well should be undermined in this way. The Men's Pond was a great example of tolerance with (for example) gay men and straight (and devout) Haredi Jewish men happily co-existing and accepting each other. Presumably it was similar for the women - and there is a mixed pond 'option' anyway so why can't the travesti simply go there?

It's a difficult and sensitive issue. I don't find it any more surprising that a transgendered person or someone in the process of transitioning (to qualify under the NHS for reassignment, an individual must first live full-time for two years as the gender to which they wish to transition) to male or female (male to female transitions being more common, I believe) would wish to opt for a single-sex environment than cis-gendered people. That said, sadly there are nowadays those who seek to exploit more tolerant policies for their own ends. Difficult one to police sometimes when balancing risk against discrimination.

Maybe this is gross, but I never showered after gym class, because I didn't want to be completely disrobed in front of people. I just went to a corner of the locker room and changed back to my normal clothes and hoped nobody would notice.

I mostly did the same, especially when the games teachers (a sizeable proportion of whom were, in my experience, bullies who were often insecure that they didn't teach a 'real' subject) started to police the showers and demand nudity. Mind you, in my contempt for the whole set-up I generally managed to avoid working up any sweat anyhow. Looking back, I rather resent how much time that could have been profitably spent on academic matters (to say nothing of the financial side of it) was wasted on games "lessons".