Unglamorous Germany

‘Why Germans never bought into the celebrity culture’

Some say Germany lacks a celebrity culture of the kind that exists in the United States - an egalitarian world-view and a dose of intellectual snobbery means that the cult of fame has never taken off here in the same way.

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Below is a comment in response to the above quoted article.

a female voice Says:
August 7th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

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.