Travelblips

In sunny St John’s today (I know - local readers would laugh at that - but it really is sunny today after a week of pea soup fog which rendered anything beyond 100m invisible!), there is a sight I usually associate with the UK: men standing around in shorts and no t-shirt, weilding a beer bottle as they talk amongst themselves.

Now, for the average woman, nothing can be more unappealing than seeing a group of men with pasty white skin and rotund bellies preening under the sun rays, ‘catching a bit of colour.’ I will give the Newfoundland men credit for not going as far as wearing socks with sandles as they flaunt their less than athletic physiques, but thats about the only distinction between them and their British counterparts across the atlantic (who were probably engaging in this visually criminal act a month ago).

And the women? All neatly done up in 3/4 length cargo pants and short sleeve t-shirts with discrete sandles. If its an unsightly bit of white and untoned flesh, then its been discretely hidden.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, if I was a die hard watcher of American spawned movies and TV (and I probably am more addicted than I should be) then in the Hollywood real world, the men are all covered up with only a hint of a muscled shoulder appearing in a shadow cast on the wall, and the women are all walking around in bikini tank tops with a loose bow threatening to come undone at the mere glance of a guy.

So what is it about Hollywood and its ’sex sells’ attitude that means women in the movies are more disrobed than their male counterparts, but in real life, as I walk down the street, the women are all discretely dressed and its our less than buff male counterparts out there flaunting the flesh? I doubt there are many women (some, but not many) who would be brave enough to stand in a park with nothing on but a bikini top and tight shorts, holding a beer bottle as their broad expanse of rippling white flesh soaks up the sun’s rays… But men do it all the time. And these same men, don’t seem to want to see men doing it on the big (or little) screen.

Ah well. For now… I guess I shall have to except that I may be 7,500km away from London, but by golly, some things which one would hope are forgetable and non-culture transferable, are sadly, in existence - Despite Hollywood’s best efforts to ensure men all walk around completely covered up while the woman sprawl around in a state of serious undress!

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