Taken from the website below, which I recommend you all bookmark if you want an idea of what's happening in Germany, and other cultural aspects. (READ: Hey Dad, read this when you're bored to get a better impression of my life here and why I like it!)
http://www.thelocal.de/
This was a comment about an article about some guy who thought Germany needs more of a "celebrity culture" a la USA:
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I love how unglamorous Berlin is. As a female, in general I can walk around looking however I like without feeling judged or watched. It’s refreshing to speak with men without feeling like I’m being checked out like a piece of meat. In fact, I think this lack of superficiality is just what I love most about Berlin. It allows me to function on a daily level as a human being and not as an objectified female. I feel empowered here.
I loved stepping foot in Berlin upon returning from Italy. It’s so wonderful to be able to engage on a human and intellectual level instead of constantly batting off stupid men or feeling pressure to meet up to a certain image standard. Getting off that plane and looking at all the low-key black-clad booted and stockinged women and men, I didn’t feel any pressure to be anything in particular other than me.
I get this wonderful feeling sometimes when I see model pictures of human beings inside stores here that wouldn’t make it past the drawing board in the US.
Call me crazy, but I even love the staring Germans in the subways and on the streets simply because they aren’t staring for sexual reasons. I love that. They’re just staring because they’re bored, or curious, or thinking, maybe evaluating me or maybe some other stupid thing, but at least I don’t get the feeling they’re objectifying me and judging me either on the basis of my glamour and beauty or lack thereof, or trying to manipulate me into feeling anything.
I’m allergic to people who want to make me be like everyone else by accepting their poisonous glamour standards. I’m glad I don’t watch TV. I think beauty standards are fascist, propagate the very worst of the status quo, and do a disservice to people, especially women.
From my feminist point of view, I reject celebrity standards because I function not based on a societal standard but because I am me and I express myself. I just am, the people around me just are, and that’s enough for me, and I want that to be enough for me. We think, we do, we coexist, we are. I don’t need others’ approval. I also don’t want to fall into the nasty glamour lie when someone seeks my ranking of them on a scale I don’t want to use.
I feel passionately about this. Thank God for unglamorous Germany.
------------end-------No worries folks, no sex change op in the cards. I would never want to be a German girl, they're complicated enough as it is...
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