Europe’s tough ‘cover-up’ rules hit tourists with fines for wearing swimwear on the streets: ‘You’ll get caught’

Hold on to yourself. I have a budgie to smuggle.

As I found out the hard way, Europeans like to think of themselves as sophisticated.

There were some Enlightenment figures writing a few books a few hundred years ago and now they’re all: “you can’t wipe your mouth with your hand” and “no swimmers dressed off the beach, you filthy convicts!”

Rude

Anyway.

I am here to argue that the Dark Ages never left Europe.

While here in Australia we’ve perfected beachwear, mainly with the invention of the boardshort, in Europe you have the strange contradiction of a culture that’s extremely comfortable with leaving body parts dangling in the sand, while also – apparently – very offended by the bare flesh outside the beach.

And that’s before we even get into the scourge of Euro men’s swimwear.

Unlike Australia, where we have a perfect balance, in Europe, in many places, you can sunbathe on the beach without a care in the world, but walk down the promenade to get an ice cream or sit in a beachside cafe in a bikini (or shorts with no T-shirt) and you’re suddenly – so we believe – a public menace.

Across Europe, Old World towns are said to be furious with tourists who break some unspoken street dress code when visiting the beach.

In fact, in many countries it is no longer unspoken.

A few years ago, the mayor of Sorrento, Massimo Coppola, imposed a fine of 500 euros ($800 AUD) for walking around and showing bare flesh, which he said contributed to “widespread indecent behavior ” and damaged the city’s reputation.

Now many cities, from Sicily, Sorrento and Barcelona, ​​have introduced similar “cover-up” rules.

It has even spread to Croatia, with Sail Croatia revelers heading to Dubrovnik recently warned to cover up or risk getting caught there too.

Traveler Isabella Lakin recently took to TikTok to warn fellow globetrotters “don’t wear a bikini top when you leave the beach without something over it. They will get you. They don’t want tourists to do that.”

“If you’re doing Sail Croatia and think you can just walk around town in a bikini top, I wouldn’t recommend it. I know a few people who got stung really badly last year … and it was mainly the people at Sail Croatia who forgot the rules.”

Although I’m generally in favor of adapting to your environment, I’m suspicious of these prohibitions.

Why?

Although I was once politely asked to leave a French supermarket (in the beach town of Hossegor) because of safety for going barefoot, after nearly three years of living in Spain, I never once felt judged for walking off the beach shirtless (people were generally more shocked by my bare feet).

I also haven’t seen anyone complain about tourists wearing bikinis on the street or peeing in the ocean.

It seems to me that the European politicians in the overcrowded spots are trying to shift the blame from their poor governance to the tourists, directing the frustration of the residents who should turn to them, elsewhere.

The real erosion of reputation in these cities and towns (especially the bigger ones like Barcelona), I think, is not the tourists briefly crossing a square to get back to their hotel with their swimmers, it’s the McDonald’s around the corner, Starbucks upstairs. the street, the nightclub under their feet, the increasingly unaffordable rental prices for residents.

When you get to the point where you have to control details of behavior such as banning thongs (as Cinque Terre has done) and shirts and football shirts (as a group of restaurants in Mallorca did) and urinating in the ocean (as happened on the Costa del Sol) you should you begin to wonder if there is actually a deeper problem at play and if officials are simply trying to take advantage of Europe’s headwinds, glossing over its relationship with tourists and shifting the blame from their management of weak tourism.

Instead of fining some Contiki backpacker who forgot to pack a beach towel, why not focus on fixing the things that affect your residents?

If you did, these little complaints probably wouldn’t weigh so much.

Scantily clad tourists are more of the straw that breaks the camel’s back: balsa grass is the sheer number of them (and the change in a city’s social fabric that comes with it).

And as for clothing: I think a little side-eye from a local is the best deterrent there is against inappropriate clothing. Putting something in writing generally leads to people wanting to do it more. Just let the embarrassment take its natural course and don’t give the tourists something to rebel against.

Love from an annoying tourist…

This article originally appeared on Escape and has been reprinted with permission