My Gift to You—Get Your Free Ebook—”The 5-Day Journey to Cultural Awareness”!
More travels . . . more tales . . .
My mother was recently here visiting our family in Spain, along with our son’s best friend from the U.S.
We had a blast showing them around this beautiful country. We especially enjoyed going down south, visiting Sevilla, Granada, Cordoba, Gibraltar, Malaga, and the warm and “steamy” Costa del Sol.
When we landed for a picnic on one spot of the Mediterranean Sea, the view was breathtaking. I’ll post the picture here, but just know, photos don’t do justice to the beauty in the eye of the beholder.
To the right, we see the mainland of Spain. In the middle, we see the Rock of Gibraltar, which is a British principality. On the left, we see the beautiful land of Morocco where our family lived for seven years.
It’s unbelievable that we can see three countries and two continents in one picture, none of which are connected by land!
During our vacation, our family had one beach day. Well, it actually wasn’t a full beach “day,” because we were only there an hour or so. We are not “beach people.” We have never enjoyed hanging out in the hot sun all day, setting up umbrellas and tents, having picnic lunches, and roasting our bodies between sand and water all day. We just don’t like the beach, beyond a few hours.
I do love the water, however. I love to see it, to hear it, to breathe it in. I especially love strolling on seaside boardwalks, sitting in cafés on the beach, enjoying drinks and tapas, and writing in my journal. When we lived in Morocco, we were only 100 meters from the beach. At night, I loved to leave my windows open to hear the rolling, crashing waves. They rocked me to sleep.
During our recent family vacation, since we were on the breathtaking Mediterranean Sea in southern Spain, we had to have a “beach day.” It was breathtaking—in many ways!
“We have a big problem!” my husband said, just a few minutes after setting up our towels and chairs.
The boys were already neck-deep in the cool, refreshing, turquoise water.
“What’s wrong?!” I asked, feeling his panic.
“We are responsible for David’s friend, and we are on a European beach. You know what that means!”
“I thought about that as soon as we walked down here, but we can’t control the world around us. I don’t see anything too revealing yet.”
Yep! European beaches. If you don’t know what that means, here’s a story I wrote when our family hit the beaches of southern Spain awhile back. It’s called “Culture Shock—Nude Beaches!”
After about an hour of romping in the waters, my mother was aggressively knocked down by the waves. I tried to pick her up, barely able to withstand the strength of the waves myself.
“Help me!” I screamed at my husband, a bit further out in the sea. In the meantime, the waves continued to crash incessantly against my mother, sitting deep in the water on the sand.
My son came galloping through the waves and joined us, along with my husband.
“1, 2, 3!” he shouted, as we all heaved my poor mother up out of the water.
“Time to go!” she said, her sinuses flowing full-blown. The salt water had done its work.
We all got out of the water and sat down under the umbrella, enjoying a few snacks that I had packed in the beach bag. In the distance, we could see a few topless women walking nonchalantly around. Thankfully, the boys seemed to be looking in the opposite direction.
“We better go now. More and more people are starting to come out. You never know what we might see,” I said to my husband.
“Right. Let’s pack up and head out.”
Then, I turned my head just slightly, and there she was . . .
Old, saggy, wrinkly, big. No, not just big, HUGE . . .
They were in our faces HUGE and in our faces CLOSE. The older, 80-something-year-old woman sat on her beach towel, no more than 10 feet away from us.
And, strangely enough, she wasn’t facing the ocean or even facing the sun. Rather, she was facing US! It was almost as if she was giving us all a show, a spectacle.
“Oh my gosh!” I screamed underneath my breath.
I quickly turned to my mother, with eyes about to pop out of my head. “Did you see her?”
It seems that we had all seen her (and THEM) at the exact same time. There was no avoiding her. No pretending that she didn’t exist. No hiding. No running.
“Turn the other way, boys,” my husband said sternly.
They tried. They really did. They tried to look elsewhere—at the other bathers lying on the sand all around us, the small children building sand castles in the distance, the heads and shoulders bobbing up and down in the water, the sailboats gliding across the sea, the seagulls flying overhead, the bag of half-eaten potato chips in our hands . . .
They tried to turn the other way.
“What is it?” Pierre, our nine-year-old son asked innocently.
“Nothing, no worries,” I said. “Let’s go! It’s time!”
We frantically folded our umbrellas and beach chairs, shook the sand out of our towels, placed our belongings in the beach bags, and meandered through the blazing hot sand with our bare feet.
No time for putting on shoes. No time for stopping.
We left the beach, returned to the apartment rental, showered, and then headed to Malaga to the Picasso Museum. It was my mother’s request, and it just happened to be Sunday. On Sundays, the museum is free to the public for the last two hours of the day. The line wasn’t even that long. Thank heavens, because the sun was barreling down.
Our family walked through the exhibit. It seemed like 75% or more of the paintings were nude and erotic. Breasts, women, bathers everywhere.
It’s like we couldn’t escape it.
Upon leaving the museum, no one talked about the woman at the beach. No one talked about THEM. Old, saggy, wrinkly, big. No, not just big, HUGE . . .
Until a few days later . . . I could no longer contain the taboo topic inside. I could no longer shove this story under the rug. I could no longer remain silent.
“Do you guys remember the beach?” I asked David and his friend.
“Yep!” they both said with a big grin.
“We tried so hard to spare you. We tried so hard to avoid being on a topless beach. We tried so hard for you not to see. But, you did.”
“Yep!” they both said with a big grin.
“I’ll tell your parents—fill them in on our morning adventure on the topless beach in Spain!”
David’s friend laughed. This was his first time overseas, his first time traveling alone, and his first time, yep, his first time seeing old, saggy, wrinkly, big. No, not just big, HUGE . . . !
David’s American friend will never forget his trip to Europe and his first time to the beach in Spain!
—The Cultural Story-Weaver
My Gift to You—Get Your Free Ebook—”The 5-Day Journey to Cultural Awareness”!
Let’s Weave Cultures!
Have you ever been to a topless or nude beach? Was it planned or did you stumble upon it?
We invite you to tell us your own cultural stories and global adventures . . . as you engage with the world, breaking down barriers, building bridges, and “weaving cultures”! Write about them in the comment box below.
Sorry to hear of all the graffic exposure for your kiddos. The beach and museum. Linda
Thanks, Linda. It is the reality of the world we live in. Like all parents, we try out best to protect our kids, but at one point or another, they will be exposed. I guess the importance is talking openly about it with them and trying to teach them as best we can.
Thank u for my 1st laugh of the day! ha, ha,ha!
Glad it could make you laugh! I was NOT laughing at the time it was happening, but boy, did we laugh afterwards! 🙂
That is a hilarious story and you tell it so well!
Ha! Ha! It wasn’t funny at the time. I was dying! But, boy can we laugh about it now! 🙂
Pretty sad the way in which you are terrified about people’s bodies. It is particularly sad for the taboos and poor relationship with their bodies you’ll be generating for your kids
Thank you for your comment. I’m not terrified by people’s bodies. It is a matter of cultural differences. In my country, we don’t have topless beaches, so I wrote this story more from a perspective of cultural differences and the shock that can come with that. I apologize if I offended you in any way by sharing my own personal story and experience.
It was interesting to hear your reactions to topless beaches in Spain. I’m in my late 60s and from the UK. The first time I went out of the country was to the south of France in 1979. As I had suspected, the beaches were all topless and I would think 75% or more of the women on the beaches were topless. It did not take me long to join in. Since then I have always sunbathed topless (or nude in later years, but that is another story!) whenever possible. We always chose to visit places where topless sunbathing was practiced. I have three children and they all grew up considering it quite normal for their mother to sunbathe topless. None of them, including my son, were ever concerned about topless sunbathers or even took much notice of them.
In recent years, the advent of smartphones and the Internet was resulted in a decline in topless sunbathing in Europe, but it is still practiced widely. I saw some figures recently from Spain that suggested that almost 50% still go topless. I would be sad to see it disappear — the feel of the sun on bare breasts is an innocent pleasure that every woman should experience at east once in her lifetime!
Thank you, Hilary, for sharing your personal experience. The statistics you share are interesting, and I would agree that 50% is probably quite accurate for Spain. In my story, I think I was especially concerned about having my friend’s son visiting with us from the U.S. I knew that topless beaches would be a culture shock to him, and I was right! 🙂