Tourist magnet blows off Speedo-wearing men Alton Towers, the UK's biggest tourist attraction, has balked at the corrupting spectacle of men in skimpy swimming trunks, and has threatened offenders with compulsory bikini line waxing. The Staffs-based theme park has slapped a ban on Speedos and similar garments at its water park, in a bid to maintain its "family friendly …
So I assume that female bathers will also be required to cover up appropriately and avoid showing any cleavage or camel-toe as this would be wholly inappropriate for a family enviroment?
Not that I would EVER wish to subject the public to the sight of me in speedos, but you just have to love the equality.
Actually, I wait for the first bloke to turn up in a bikini and sue them for being sexist when they turn him away.
They haven't talked to their German colleagues lately, have they? According to German Bademeisters (as seen on TV on various occasions) shorts are unhygienic and every time the guy leaves the pool he takes up to 2 litres of water with him wihich costs a fortune to replace.
saw this mentioned on the late night paper review on Sky News last night - amusingly one of the commentators was a French academic/journalist who pointed out that in French public swimming pools it is compulsory to wear tight fitting swimming trunks and the sort of baggy shorts in vogue wiv da kidz here are banned.
N.b I wonder if they are PC enough to impose similar restrictions on skimpy bikinis?
In France & Italy, it's the other way round - they recently decided you have to wear 'proper' skimpy swimming trunks, rather diving in in the boxer shorts which you may have been wearing for a week. (This caused some trouble amongst French Muslim youth, on the not-unreasonable grounds that flashing your marital wares to the world whilst wearing skimpies is immodest and hence definitely not Islamic....IIRC, one municipal pool ended up with a car dumped in it as a protest against its insistence on this rule).
I'm with the Islamic yoof on that one.
Paris cos... she wouldn't care what a man was wearing, when deciding whether to blow him off
I think Alton Towers need to pull their head in and keep their Victorian antiquated views to themselves, gosh, you'd think we live in an Islamic state.
This is a disgraceful trend that is fast infecting our society these days and needs halting.
What right do they have to tell people what they can and can not wear. So long as these people are dressed within what the law permits, there is nothing to say. The law is our moral compass, not some doddering old fart who is scared of seeing a 'limp bulge' because it might prompt a question from a child. Head + sand = hide from kids questions = all sorted, they will never have sex or want to understand human anatomy later in life.
Next weeks Headline, Flasher Macs banned because perverts wear them and they are not family friendly (flashers, rather than the mac ... ohh actually OSX is pretty crap for the family).
Alton Towers Resort sales and marking director Morwenna Angove, Alton Towers sales and marking director, said: “We feel this small brief style is not appropriate for a family venue so we are advising male bathers to wear more protective swimwear such as shorts.”
“We are also looking into offering complimentary male waxing, which will preserve the dignity of all our guests.”
Maybe they can explain why hairiness is undignified, yet at the same time totally natural. Is Alton Towers now a bastion of body fascism? Will the next rule be that any man without pecs and abs must wear a burka at all times because fat flabby torsos are undignified?
This is actually winding me up more and more every time I think of it!
Oh dear, oh dear, woman screams! "that man has an outline of a penis in his pants, he must be a [s]peedo", now, I'm not a big fan of budgie smugglers but really, beside, as most gentlemen may be aware shorts can result in "chernobyl fallout", I wonder what the punishment for women with camel-toe would be? I've made no "official" stuffy but the camel-toe offence occurs far more often than [s]peedos but in that case the offender is the viewer, not the other way round, it's funny how breast feeding and figure-hugging bikinis* are OK but allowing your swimming trunks to have an outline of a penis is not, double standard? come on women! start complaining or you're not allowed to complain about the objectification of women.
*Big fan, only to be bettered by a water-slide and a surprisingly cool breeze.
Phoned them and talked to some very very rude and snotty girl, who said that women could wear what they liked and alton towers would not discuss this in anyway apart from via mail.
asked them if it complied with sexual discrimination laws, to which i got the above in a very snotty and aggressive tone.
So another place crossed off for sheer stupidity.
wants to sit in fibre-glass ride on a hot sunny day in a banana hamock?
Burn baby burn!
Oh and as for the French ideas, I have seen plenty of times fat germans wandering along the road in greece's finest during the day in Speedos and Flip Flops. What is the difference between them and me in my swim shorts? At least I am air cooled.
I shall be protesting strongly this year during my hols in France, I may throw burning speedo's into the pool to show my disgust. If the french do one thing well it is to protest, I am sure they will welcome me as a hell raising brother in arms.
How about it chaps/chapessses - a survey of IT's pros' attitudes to swimwear (and/or pose-wear).
Get it right, and there'll be lots of free exposure for L. Reg on the Beeb, Daily Fail, &c &c. Get it wrong, and there could be lots of free exposure for L. Reg on the Beeb, Daily Fail, &c, &c.
Naturist, take note "Nudist" health spas, camp sites and beaches are common place throughout Europe, and are suitable and very popular for all ages from Tot to Gran.
and having lived here for 5 years now and have visted many and have enjoyed the chance to sunbath, sit in a juccuzi, jog or generally relax in the same manner we came into this world, I really don't understand what you guys are making such a fuss about.
I look at the UK as a very sad place to be these days, and this kind of thing only really ads to the misery you people in the UK must endure.
Its a very sad state of affairs when people are soo ashamed of their bodies, or feel a need to cover up all apsects of the body. really very sad.
Move on
Just make sure they're adequately restrained, is all. Budgie smuggling is OK, but if you're packing a pelican and a couple of fat baby birds, please make sure it's all under control.
And yes please, do also put in place policies requiring mingers to be suitably covered. I don't want to see bingo wings or beer guts jiggling on the roller-coaster, thanks.
(The "troll alert" because there are some seriously hideous people around at Alton Towers.)
According to the article (I read it all, did you?) it seems that the Alton Towers people have objections to the sight of pubic hair. (That's the _evil_ hair which condemns you to hell if you see it or show it). The humorous clue is in the references to compulsory bikini line waxing.
For those men (and unfortunate women) who's 'bush' gives the appearance of extending up to their navel and beyond, it seems that they'd be required to wear dungarees to be allowed in the pools. The key question would be, 'how do they decide what is pubic hair and what is ordinary body hair?'
Can't have a bunch of chubby brits wandering around in (read: in danger of falling out of)budgie-smugglers - that upsets the "Think Of da Chil'renz!" brigade. So, they ban budgie-smugglers.
But then, this'll enrage the PC gender-equality brigade, especially given the (fairly sensible) argument that bikinis can leave just as little to the imagination - camels ahoy! This is especially on ladies "of a larger build" - but we can't have a size-based clothing policy can we? this would force us to acknowledge that certain clothes just aren't designed for those of us who are "a little overweight".
So I forsee a banning of bikinis too.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for less barely-clad whales hanging around the pool - but it'd be very sad to be deprived of the view of the more decorously-curved of the fairer sex splashing about in enough material to make a (small) hankie. And I'm sure many of the ladies out there* would miss sneaking a peak at the occasional speedo-clad Adonis strutting his (insufferably smug) stuff poolside.
The question I put to you, goot dennizens of El Reg, is this - is it worth losing all the oggling potential a summer's day in the pool provides, in exchange for the reduced risk of accidental rettina-burn from those ill-advised or self-deluding enough to convince that yes, their 300lb bod looks *great* in a thong?
oh yes, and to "protect the chil'runz" of course...
*yes yes, I know, "there are no girls on the internet", let's say I'm speaking hypothetically
Hmm.. maybe they should use Victorian values, Anon-Coward.
I can see bathing machines being all the rage, especially if combined with a roller-coaster.
Of course, the ladies and gentlemen would have to be segregated and the ladies and gents would also need to wear long swim-suits.
As far back as I can remember I've worn swimming trunks, or as they now appear to be called speedoes (always reminds me of Speedo by The Cadillacs) or banana hammocks, I rather like that term. These shorts are yet another example of creeping American prudishness which is something we Bits can do without, we're prudish enough as it is. I say this from personal experience, when I worked in America the girls in the office were quite interested to know if we really did wear BHs before going to the beach with us. On learning that we did some of them wouldn't go others would which at least gave us an indication as to which ones we should be trying to pull.
Also reminds me of a joke.
Two old women were laying on the beach when a nudist came up and spread himself out before them.
One had a stroke.
The other couldn't reach.
Maybe I've gone native since living in mainland Europe for the last 9 years, sort of lost my 'civilisation'. Can't help but think this is just another example of British culture becoming unanchored and having absolutely no centre to it apart from buying stuff and trying not to offend people.
The whole idea that a body can be offensive is strange to me. There are fat people, really skinny people and some in between. Some have got big knobs, some don't. What's the big deal? How can any of this be 'family unfriendly'? So many items of clothing are designed to reveal or enhance the ability to see the shape of certain body parts, so what's different about Speedo style trunks?
Oh, it's wandering pubes. OK, whilst I agree it's not a great look, it is a part of the body. The person didn't deliberately grow it so as to frighten a little kid did they? Can we look forward to the time when a woman is ejected from a public place for wearing a bob tube, or having forgotten to do a recent shave under her arms?
If a person wants to appear in public revealing lightly more of themselves than others would chose to do, why should anyone get wound up about it. As a father of two early teen daughters, I am not upset if they see sme dude in a banana hammock. They like me can chose to secretly i) laugh at what they see, ii) admire what they see, iii) just ignore it. I don't want the Thought Police to start this kind of censorship as it is just a matter of personal taste.
Having just came back from Egypt where it is normal to see women in the pool with a head to foot Burqa on, I'd be interested to know if this is acceptable clothing for the pool (which they also could have had on for weeks).
My bet: yes (if it is 'your religion' then u pretty much get away with anything).
As a pastafarian, I have started a motion with the Church of the Spagetti Monster to outlaw the wearing of anything but mankinis.... once that passes I'll be interested in what Alton Towers has to say about repressing my religious freedom....
Anyhoo they are missing a trick here.. .if I owned the park, they'd be a maximum BMI allowed for bikinis or speedos, and under a certain BMI, women would be required to wear g-strings. topless bathing would be encouraged too. Hell when I was a kid on holiday, that was about the only reason I went into the pool (too see wimins bits bobbling around wing my goggles on...)
Body shame is harmful. The harm is widespread and often serious. It is not coincidence that the USA, one of the most prudish western countries, has such appalling outcomes compared to places like Denmark or The Netherlands. A US teenager of average becomes sexually active neary a year younger, is less likely to use a condom or contraception and is more likely to be promiscuous. The results are predictable. Several times more likely to have an abortion, nearly ten times more likely to become pregnant and about seventy times more likely to catch gonorrhea. This isn't about family values. It is about prejudice and encouraging attitudes that are little better than child abuse. Is an irrational adult prejudice really worth the life of even one child?
There is one genuinely family friendlty weekend event of the year at Alton Towers is when the entire Splashlandings Hotel and water park is taken over by naturists for the weekend.
"the way I see it, a pool with 30 people in it is a pool with 30 sphincters in it."
The way I see it, a pool with 30 people in it is a pool with quite a lot more than 30 sphincters in it. I would think more in the 1000 to 2000 range. Most of which might prove quite difficult to wash.
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