After a long winter, in which the threat of the energy crisis due to Russia’s war against Ukraine has not ceased to be felt, the first sunny days arrive in Berlin. With temperatures already above ten degrees Celsius, Berliners begin to consider going to enjoy the sun in public outdoor pools. But in those public places, this spring and this summer, they promise to be different. Now women will be able to swim topless.
It’s not that they couldn’t before, it’s that no one put up a fight like the thirty-something Berliner Lotte Mies has done. Thanks to her, last March, the city authorities gave their explicit approval for the users of public swimming pools can swim without the swimsuit top.
This woman, back in December, confronted the management of the public and indoor swimming pool in Kaulsdorf, on the outskirts of Berlin. Over there Mies went swimming wearing a swimsuit that did not cover her breasts. they didn’t let him. What’s more, he ended up facing the police, which he still talks about when asked about what happened and why they forced him to leave the premises.
“I follow waiting for an apology from the pool and the police“, Mies tells EL ESPAÑOL. She understands that they owe her an apology after taking that episode to the authorities, specifically to the Berlin Ombudsman’s Office. In March they agreed with him. With the State Law against Discrimination in the background, the authorities have ended up making it clear that Mies was not doing anything punishable the day she was expelled from the Kaulsdorf public pool.
“There is no rule about swimming without a top. What there was was an unspoken moral rule about how women should behave. In this case, the rule was: ‘don’t show a lot of skin,’ “says Mies. “There is no law that prohibits it,” he says about wearing a swimsuit without a top in public swimming pools. Currently, Mies also hope it clears up the authorities will have to compensate her for his treatment at the Kaulsdorf public swimming pool.
“Equal breasts for all“
Mies worked at the time as a lifeguard and has experience ensuring the safety of bathers on the beach. That made him aware that there was no law that prohibited her or any woman from swimming topless.
In addition, Mies is active in a feminist initiative entitled “Equal breasts for all“This initiative began to be talked about in the summer of 2021, when another woman, Gaberielle Lebreton, a French architect based in Berlin, confronted the authorities after she and her son were thrown out of some public facilities in the park Treptower Park, where there are some water fountains ideal for children to play on the hottest days of summer.Lebreton was there making toples, until he had to leave the park after interacting with a couple of police officers.
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According to the local chronicle, the police argument against Lebreton was article 118 of the law on regulatory infractions, according to which the woman’s breasts, in a public park with children, could constitute “a rude and unseemly act.” At the time, Alexander Pabst, a criminal lawyer, told the Berlin daily B.Z.that that item was particularly a “gray area” of German law.
Be that as it may, the Lebreton case launched the “Equal Breasts for All” mobilization, where the idea is that “Women in Berlin can, where possible, show their tops where men are allowed to”. Mies has taken this cause to swimming pools. And he has won the battle, at least in Berlin. Among other things, because Mies argued that she was the object of “discrimination” for being a woman when it came to being prevented from swimming with her breasts exposed. She has forced Berlin’s public pools to reconsider their rules.
“They wanted me to be raped”
“Our bathroom rules do not make gender-specific differences. And bathing without a swimsuit top, for men and women, is equally possible,” Kristina Tschenett, spokesperson for Berlin’s public pools, has made an effort to explain to the private RTL television channel. In Berlin it is very rare to see men in swimsuits that cover their chests. For Mies, having had to fight in front of the institutions to be able to swim as men usually do has to do with his desire to, as he says: “shape my life freely”.
That activism, however, has cost him being in a very delicate public display situation. And not because much of Germany has seen her swimming in her style. Exposure of his cause – it was news all over the world – has also had as consequence of having received numerous threats, iincluding death threats. “These threats are made, above all, by men. If they go too far I forward them to the police“, Mies tells EL ESPAÑOL. As he has assured these days: “some have wanted me to be raped.”
“If we live in countries where equality is enshrined in the Constitution, I don’t understand what we are discussing.”
Yours is not an easy situation. “All this has been, of course, very stressful, starting with having to contact organizations and authorities, seek help, in addition to the humiliation experienced by the pool staff and the police, beyond the harassment, the threatening emails, “he maintains. “As long as it is about the rights of women and, specifically, her body, They quickly want you to be raped”abounds.
Also threatened could be the achievement that her militancy in “Equal Breasts for All” has brought to the Berlin bathers who They want to go lightly dressed. Because Tschenett, the head of communication for Berlin’s public swimming pools, recognized RTL that authorities are open that, in case there are problems associated with topless women in public swimming pools, if those problems in the form of customer complaints reach management, “there will be discussions about it again.”
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Before the arrival of the hottest days in Berlin, however, Mies has not experienced any strange situation that makes him think that authorities reformulate the rules that she has helped to make clear. “Personally, I’ve yet to experience any stupid situations when I’ve gone swimming,” he says. In the event that something happens, she focuses on who or who can alter her now apparently rescued right to swim with her breasts exposed.
“I think it’s important that as a society we support those affected and not make a perpetrator-victim investment. We should start at once to hold the aggressors accountable. The aggressor is always to blame,” she says. She understands that her particular struggle to bathe in the same way that men do “is not just a breast problem, but a general problem.” “If we live in countries where equality is enshrined in the Constitution, nI don’t understand what we’re discussing right now”he concludes.
