Chop chop 2

In Germany one can follow a course in laughing and there are laughing and giggle groups one can join. These courses aim to improve good health and mental stability. The English have a well published sense of humour and a laughing course would be perceived as "utterly redundant" on this island. "This is for Germans who have no sense of humour."

England is hung up about sex and bodily taboos. There is no German "body culture" (Koerper Kultur) or Dutch "sexual liberalism" (sexuele vrijheid).

Channel 4 in the UK sussed this and have created plenty of programmes that cash in on bodily themes. Last night I saw an example of this, a programme about "the vagina". It turns out that thousands of girls and women in this country have issues with - too large - labia minora, or in other words with their inner or small lips. These issues translate into thousands of plastic surgical operations per year to reduce the size of these girls' and womens' lips.

There is now a course - there may be more than one, I didn't explore - that helps groups of women to "look their vagina in the face" by looking into a mirror, and to get to know "the story of their vagina" so that these women stop wanting to chop off their inner lips.

We may ridicule the Germans who need a course to learn to smile and laugh and shake their livers. But the cost of a culture that prescribes bodily taboos resulting in painful mutulating procedures is in my eyes no laughing matter. It certainly takes the smile off my lips.