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If you want to know what makes a foreign culture different from your own, there\u2019s nothing like a culture clash. This month, Danish and (corporate) American values clashed when Danish author Peter \u00d8vig<\/strong> was banned from Apple\u2019s online bookstore. Why? Because his recent books,\u00a0Hippie 1<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Hippie 2<\/em>, contain some photos of naked people. Sure, any\u00a0forlag<\/strong>\u00a0(publisher) has the right to say yes or no to a book. A lot of Danes, however, were very upset, and some prominent politicians made complaints about \u201dAmerican\u201d\u00a0censur<\/strong>\u00a0[sen-SOOR] (censorship) and\u00a0sn\u00e6versyn<\/strong>\u00a0(narrow outlook).<\/p>\n We Danes generally take pride in our\u00a0frisind<\/strong>\u00a0[FREEsen] (liberalism, literally \u201dfree mind\u201d). This hasn\u2019t always been so \u2013 if you were to time-travel to the 1950\u2019ies, you\u2019d find a much more formal Danish society (with people wearing hats and calling each other mr and mrs). But in the 1960\u2019ies, with Beatlemania and everything, people started to drop the formalities (such as the polite pronoun\u00a0De<\/strong>, you) \u2013 and, in a few cases, their\u00a0t\u00f8j<\/strong>\u00a0[toy] (clothes). One such case was the annual feminist summer camp on Fem\u00f8 (an\u00a0\u00f8<\/strong>, island), where women gathered to discuss their rights and be naked in the sun.<\/p>\n Today, only a few real \u201dhippies\u201d survive in Denmark, but the spirit lingers on. Danes have a very relaxed attitude to\u00a0n\u00f8genhed<\/strong>\u00a0(nakedness). Photos of topless hippie women, as those in \u00d8vig\u2019s book, hardly offend anyone. They\u2019re seen as a part of Danish cultural history.<\/p>\n Just being naked, of course, has nothing to do with sex. That said, there isn\u2019t much hush-hush about \u201dit\u201d either! In fact, Denmark was among the first nations to legalize pornographic pictures (in 1969).<\/p>\n Many Danes take a lighthearted and secular (non-religious) stance on life. That sometimes creates conflicts with foreigners who view things like sexuality and the body as something sacred or very private. I know some visitors to Denmark have a hard time getting used to Danish men AND women using sexual words in public, or seeing newspaper cartoons of politicians having sex, etc. But that\u2019s not something that makes a modern Dane blush. (Most Danes find it far too prudish when American TV stations beep away swearwords.)<\/p>\n Sure, the nudists have their own places in Denmark too, and people here have just as many\u00a0h\u00e6mninger<\/strong>\u00a0(inhibitions) as elsewhere. But I think it\u2019s fair to say that the general atmosphere is (still!) another than in most US states, for example. That\u2019s just something you should be aware of \u2013 in case seeing a naked man swimming along a public beach or watching a woman breast-feed her baby at a caf\u00e9 unsettles you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you want to know what makes a foreign culture different from your own, there\u2019s nothing like a culture clash. This month, Danish and (corporate) American values clashed when Danish author Peter \u00d8vig was banned from Apple\u2019s online bookstore. Why? Because his recent books,\u00a0Hippie 1\u00a0and\u00a0Hippie 2, contain some photos of naked people. Sure, any\u00a0forlag\u00a0(publisher) has…<\/p>\n