Well is it? Are we really repressed bumpkins when it comes to public acceptance of sexuality and nudity as wholesome things?
Are the English, French, Spanish and Germans etc. less uptight than we are about sex?
Ah…yes, and not only Europe, I’d have to throw in Australia in there too.
If the [reaction to] Janet Jackson incident is anything to go by, most definately YES.
every culture is degenerate and simaltaniously insainly up tight to every other culture.
say country A will not ever ever ever expose their elbow in public… never never never, it would be as embarassing as wetting your pants would be to you.
country B will never ever ever say the word gorilla. its a nasty ugly word that has no place in polite speach, or any other speach for that matter.
country A will end up looking at country B and saying “dear lord! what degenerates!!! elbows everywhere! how sickening! they don’t even CARE that they are showing so much smut!”
the country B will end up looking at country A and saying “oh my, such foul mouths they have, they say gorilla in children’s books even… so degenerate!”
however at the same time… country B will be wondering why the big deal with elbows? what sorta weird repressed degenerates worry about elbows? what the hell is wrong with them? and country A will go on laughing at country B for being so childish and immature that as a culture they can’t even handle gorrillas like adults.
every culture is degenerate by every other culuture’s standards… its called 'ethrocentrism"
But we’re members of the U.S., (at least, I am) and we still think it’s rather provincial. I thought that making a fuss over the Janet Jackson incident was stupid. I can’t help but think that we as Americans act like children about it all: we celebrate nudity (or almost nudity…little flashes of skin here and there) on TV, in music videos, and then the other half of us (the not so moral majority) goes off half-cocked about how it means we’re going to hell. It’s like we’re this completely scizophrenic country. Or so immature that we seem to like going, “hehe…boobies.”
Well, as mentioned this is a problem of frames of reference. It may be that US sexual mores are provincial and immature while Europe is relaxed, open-minded and sophisticated. But that can just as well get recast as whether the Americans are merely conservative and modest while Europeans are libertines and bawds,by merely shifting where you zero the scale.
Agree with JRDelirious, but clearly the US is far to the “right” of the scale.
I dunno, we’re uptight about different things.
For instance, while I was in the UK nobody cared about public nudity much on TV, but people were more uncomfortable discussing their sex lives. I found it was about the same, really.
And, of course, the is the confusion of Celyn, on hearing her friend (from NYC) was irritated that, shopping that day, she had been unable to find any “elbows”
(Celyn was very confussed until it became sort of clear hat she just meant a shape of pasta)
At least, I think she did. (Quite a fierce person, really, so , who knows?)
Europe thinks we’re puritans, and compared to them we probably are.
Most of the rest of the world thinks we’re oversexed libertines … and compared to them we probably are.
I think it’s more a case of how prominently, and in what contexts, sexual content is accepted as part of mainstream discourse and the media. In my experience (and i’ve lived here for almost four years now) Americans aren’t especially prudish or repressed.
It certainly seems to be the case, however, that the sexual content of free-to-air media outlets is considerably milder than it is in places like Australia (where i’m from), the UK, and most of Europe. In Australia, for example, movies are frequently shown on free-to-air TV with no editing of nudity or sex scenes. Here in the US, however, i barely bother to watch movies on TV, because the level of content censorship is ridiculous.
This also applies to issues such as swearing. I think the strongest word i’ve heard of free-to-air TV over here is “shit,” and even that is pretty unusual. Before i left Australia, shows like “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City” had begun to air on free TV, and they were all aired without any reduction in profanity. Even the famous “cunt” epiode on “Sex and the City” made it to air uncensored. By contrast, you can barely turn on a movie on free-to-air TV in America without being subjected to the laughable dubbing of swear words and blashphemy, such as “freak you” or “forget you” or “gosh darn it.” It’s really rather pathetic.
What this all says about America’s general level of prudishness is harder to determine. In my opinion, it tends to reflect the (perhaps disproportionate) political and cultural influence of a particular brand of religious values and social conservatism. I think the religious aspect is important, because i don’t think that it’s a coincidence that many of the countries with more liberal attitudes to sex in the media are also countries where religion is a much less important factor in politics and in the culture generally. In Australia, even religious people have no problem voting for non-religious candidates, and very few politicans make references to God etc. in speeches. The fact that a candidate for Prime Minister was an atheist or agnostic would not raise a ripple on the political waters. Not the case in America.
I think it is not so much about the view of single Americans vs Europeans. Many people are at least as prude as the “official” American standpoint but they have little influence on the rest. So a lot more can (and will) be done in public. e.g. There is no word that can’t be said on TV at all. This doesn’t mean that nobody objects but that nobody is able to prevent that. So European standards are not really that different but people seem to be able to live to their own standards more easily and are forced to live with the standards of others.
“Victorian” would be more accurate. In the 19th century it got so bad in the states that people were putting “trousers” on piano legs and calling bulls “gentleman cows.” We’re still recovering, IMO. So, yes: Europeans are justified in making fun of us for our views on sexuality.
Your question presumes a falsehood. The falsehood is that there is one and only one valid standard that must be universally applied across all cultures. The reality is far more complex. In general, the only real universal in this particular case is the universal of “ethnocentricity”. Europeans see that US culture has different standards and ethnocentrically make slurs upon the USA for it.
Interesting that you accuse the OP of making a false generalization, then proceed to generalize about Europeans and their attitudes to America.
Europe is less sexually open than they pretend to be.
If Great Britain is considered to be part of Europe, then they’re pretty puritanical themselves. It’s only within the last decade or so that actual pornography has been legal there.
People bring up Janet Jackson’s nipple. But tell me, has there ever been a deliberate nipple flash during a European sporting event? The World Cup? Cricket? Skating? Anything?
Well, Mark Roberts has shown much more than a nipple, and on multiple occasions.
So should we in turn mock Arabs, Africans and Asians who are more conservative than we?
When they had a news story about Janet’s nipple flash here they showed it uncensored, at about 5 in the evening. TV is a lot less uptight here. I saw Basic Instinct on free to air a few years back :).
That doesn’t prove much – it could be that European sporting events don’t have “flashers” because the organizers don’t think it’d garner much attention.
“Topless dancers? Where’s the novelty in that? Let’s see some talent, by jove!”