Читать книгу Odd Laws - Jenny Paschall - Страница 7

In some places, just being overweight or ugly is likely to cause a brush with the law. In Tropea, Italy, for instance, women are not allowed to appear nude on a beach if they are ‘fat, ugly, or generally unattractive’. The law specifies that nude sunbathing is permitted only by ‘young women capable of exalting the beauty of the female body’.

The lawmakers of Kentucky have decreed that: ‘No female shall appear in a bathing suit on any highway within the Commonwealth of Kentucky unless she be escorted by at least two officers or unless she be armed with a club.’ A subsequent amendment states: ‘… the provisions of this statute shall not apply to females weighing less than ninety pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds nor shall it apply to female horses.’

Richard Plant, twenty-nine, was charged with indecency by police in Johannesburg. He was arrested by traffic police who found him undressed from the waist down, but he was acquitted after he explained that his girlfriend was sitting on his lap at the time, and was therefore hiding his nudity.

Women in Gurnee, Illinois weighing fourteen stone or more cannot wear shorts when riding a horse.

In Palermo, Italy, it is the men who have to be careful – women can sunbathe nude in public whenever they want, but men are subject to a fine. The law states: ‘The male anatomical conformation can become obscene, even unconsciously.’

Until 1936 it was illegal for men to wear topless bathing suits in New York. In 1934, eight men were fined $1 each for topless bathing at Coney Island! In 1935 there was a mass arrest of forty-two topless male bathers in Atlantic City.