Thanks are due to Professor Ulrich Voderholzer for bringing up the subject of swimming pools as an essential democratic institution.

To be more precise: as a social therapy pool, in which it can be experienced close to the body that neither belly nor muscle mass can change anything about the equality of people.

Here they could learn to defy the need to optimize their bodies, to see themselves as equals with their problem areas.

Now that the voices are increasing to think about closing swimming pools when gas is running out, Voderholzer's voice sounds like a beacon: getting under your skin, precisely because the body phenomenological arguments for keeping the pools open are being argued directly and not just from a general social perspective, how This is what the German Life Saving Society does, for example, when it is rightly concerned that water safety in Germany could be neglected if swimming pools are closed.

Thighs too wide?

People who are dissatisfied with their own body, see it as a foreign body, are sometimes sickly afraid of looking ugly, and especially feel uncomfortable in the outdoor pool, come to Voderholzer's lifesaver, people who are dissatisfied with their own body, who see it as a foreign body, and who are undressed by a thousand eyes.

Surrounded by supposedly nothing but well-formed bodies, for which only they have eyes, these people then think of their own ugly places, be it skin, hair, figure, face.

Often, says Voderholzer, those affected spend the whole day not doing enough physically.

They design themselves as personalities from their problem zones.

Even among the thinnest there are many who think their thighs are too wide.

Forbidden light-heartedness

Who could say that they didn't know these thoughts, even if it was from swimming during puberty?

It was here, in the open-air swimming pool, that the question of identity tackled us early on: who is looking at me and how?

What is my "to"?

Am I too fat, too skinny, too long, too short?

Worst when the impression prevailed that others didn't ask themselves such questions at all, that they didn't seem to fear any universal standard for their bodies, that they just loitered around at the edge of the pool.

Envy and longing clung to this forbidden light-heartedness.

So what to do when the imagined situation becomes so unbearable that you fear appearing in the swimming pool with your perceived malformations as a brute that the others point at because he takes their gas away?

Voderholzer says that confrontation therapy can help people who are unstable about their physical ideals of perfection.

"You shouldn't avoid the situation," he explains in an interview with "Welt", but go swimming in a targeted manner.

They should not cover themselves, but wear bathing suits.

It is best to go to the swimming pool or the lake with friends, because they give you confirmation and a good feeling.

People then usually find out that no one views their body as critically as they do. The fear of anticipation is often greater than the actual fear.” Fear of anticipation about lack of gas?

go swimming