Italian Beach Culture

A quick note on the pictures: I did not actually have my camera on me the day we went in October, so I took these pictures instead just this past week, which is why the beach is not as crowded as I described in my essay. There were many more people on the beach back in October.

As I’ve mentioned before, in my essay on the politics of Gothic architecture, Americans are, at times, much more restrained as a culture than Italians. This was notable when I went to an Italian beach on the Lido. We had gone as a group to the Lido, the very first weekend of classes, while it was still warm, so the beach was still fairly busy. Not realizing that this was a partially nude beach, it was incredibly shocking to see an entire family stripping down and changing clothes, right there on the sand. The woman, presumably the mother, took her top off, so that she was standing there completely bare-chested in front of God and everybody, while one of the children, who looked at least nine or ten, was completely nude. The father and another child still seemed to be half-dressed. The most amazing thing, to me anyway, was their complete lack of embarrassment. It was absolutely no big deal to be changing clothes right on the beach. Anyone who has ever been to an amusement park with a water park knows that this is not at all the case in the United States, where the line for the dressing rooms can seems to go on for ages and no one, save perhaps for very young children two or three years old and younger, would ever change right out in front of the world like that. Or if they did choose to do so, they would almost certainly be shunned in some way and looked upon as quite odd and strange. Here, it was clearly no big deal.

Another difference that I noted also involved clothes. I saw several men wearing Speedos, the tiny little men’s swimming suits that look more like a woman’s bikini bottom. And here, just let me say that while this look works on some Olympic swimmers because they have fit bodies, it is not such a good look for an overweight sixty-five year old man. I saw an overweight sixty-five year old man wearing a Speedo, along with a couple other men, slightly younger and fitter, wearing them as well, but it was not a look that particularly flattered any of them. But the point of this analysis is not to become a fashion critique. What interested me, socio-anthropologically, about the Speedos, was that these men were wearing them at all, and that multiple men were wearing them. Occasionally at a beach in the United States there is the one oddball older man who is wearing a Speedo, but this is the rarity, not the rule, while on the Lido it seemed as common as swim trunks. This goes along with the concept that Italians are more comfortable with their bodies than Americans, because typical American men are not so comfortable putting their upper thighs and, ahem, other parts, right on display. This, I believe, is why swimming trunks are more common in the United States than Speedos because they are more modest, they cover the body better.

We have discussed in class several times about how, in general, Italians are more comfortable with their bodies than Americans are with theirs. For instance, Italians, though absolutely not dirty, are still far less obsessed with hygiene than Americans, as noted by the fact that on the vaporetti, many times, I have noticed that one or more people around me are giving off the very distinct smell of body odor. Though this does happen in America, I feel that it is far less frequent, largely due to our obsession with deodorant. Also on the vaporetti, it is noticeable that far more couples are involved in public displays of affection. Again, this is not unheard of in America, but still I find it far more frequent here in Venice. I think that it is because, despite our sex-saturated culture as a result of mass media, sex in America is still something that is private and something to be kept behind closed doors. It goes back, once again, to Italians being more comfortable with their bodies than Americans, and less ashamed of displaying affection in public places.

Overall, what began as an examination of Italian beach culture, particularly how Italians are not as concerned about nudity in a public place such as the beach, ended with considering how in general Italians are more comfortable with their bodies than Americans. This is just one of the aspects of Italian culture which I have noticed differing from American culture and it was interesting to examine it more closely.