Massive support expected as Sweden discovers key to participation woes. We believe this campaign springs from a long-running campaign by men from Dagenham in the building trade who have worked tirelessly to bare their buttocks and desexualise them, succesfully.

"'They're 'just breasts'! This is the rallying cry of a network of women who have launched a campaign for the right to bathe topless at Sweden's swimming pools.'

Outraged by what they regarded as discrimination, a group of women in southern Sweden made a show of solidarity by establishing the Bara Bröst network. (The name translates both as 'Bare Breasts' and 'Just Breasts'.)

"We want our breasts to be as 'normal' and desexualized as men's, so that we too can pull off our shirts at football matches," spokeswomen Astrid Hellroth och Liv Ambjörnsson told Ottar, a magazine published by the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education.

In a preliminary action in the middle of last month, seven members of the Bara Bröst network hopped into a pool in Malmö wearing only bikini bottoms. Before long, they were whistled to the side and asked to leave."

(Via digg Swedish Feminists Launch Campaign For The Rights To Bear Breasts At Pools: .)

Swedish Blog on the topic

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| in the news | 13 November 2007; 5:03:27 PM |# | | Discuss |

A lottery-funded pool in Cumbria designed by the architect of the troubled Clissold Leisure Centre in Hackney is still struggling to find a purpose. In common with several modern pools their new building has alleged design faults but in stark contrast to the rest of the British Isles the residents of Grange-over-Sands have a pool that lacks the swimmers required to 'worry' its water.

"More land is to be made available to developers at the site of a troubled community swimming pool.

Berners Pool in Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, closed in July 2006 with debts of £200,000, three years after opening.

This August, two potential rescue bids to take over the £3.5m pool were deemed unsuitable by South Lakeland Council.

Now the authority, which wants to regenerate the area, will offer a wider expanse of land as a site for leisure facilities, homes and businesses."

(Via BBC NEWS | England | Cumbria | Pool regeneration plans expanded: .)

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| in the news | 13 November 2007; 11:07:34 AM |# | | Discuss |