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An amusement park in Britain has banned skimpy swimwear – particularly the Speedo-style for men. The World’s Alex Gallafent has the story.

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MARCO WERMAN: More poolside news now. An amusement park in the UK has taken a bold step in the interest of public decency. It’s banned skimpy swimwear, particularly the Speedo-style for men. You know the itsy bitsy ones. Here’s The World’s Alex Gallafent.

ALEX GALLAFENT: The amusement park in question is Alton Towers. And I asked Morwenna Angove, the sales and marketing director at Alton Towers, to give me the skinny on their new policy.

MORWENNA ANGOVE: [LAUGHS] I like the fun. Okay the skinny is we have a fantastic water park here at the resort and with the great weather we’ve been experiencing over the last week or so it had come to light through our lifeguards that a number of ladies and gentlemen were wearing quite skimpy swimwear. Most of our guests are families and particularly in the water park they are younger families and we were getting an increasing amount of feedback saying that they felt some of the swimwear being worn by other guests was inappropriate. So we took the step on Monday to ban tight trunks and thong booty strings in the water park. Certainly for the [INAUDIBLE] period of the summer holidays [INAUDIBLE] young families.

GALLAFENT: How do you determine whether or not trunks are tight or too tight? I mean presumably some trunks are righter on some individuals and looser on others.

ANGOVE: Yeah it’s tight and skimpy. And we’ve put the team in the water park through some role model training so they’ve got a very good idea now of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

GALLAFENT: It may sound prudish but Ms. Angove assured me it was all business. If paying guests don’t want to see a waterlog display of personal assets then they shouldn’t have to. And that’s not all.

ANGOVE: A number of complaints that we had would you believe related to excess genital hair being on display.

GALLAFENT: Heavens.

ANGOVE: So we are actually offering complimentary bikini area waxing for gentlemen. If they wish to take us up on that they can.

GALLAFENT: Goodness me.

ANGOVE: Have you ever had it done?

GALLAFENT: Elsewhere skimpy swimming attire is de rigueur – mandatory in fact. In France it’s long swimming shorts that are banned. But only in public pools. The thinking is that board shorts and the like are more prone to picking up sand, dust, and other matter then more skimpy swimwear. That disturbs the water quality. So in France Speedos rule. But why stop there? Apart from the reasonable complaint that further discussion of the matter only makes more concrete in the mind those dignity defying images. One more place. The amusement park Alton Towers says that tight swimwear is “more suited to Spain that Staffordshire.” Staffordshire is more or less in the middle of England. So for our final destination we turn to Christina Ortiz who works at Casa de Campo, a public swimming pool in Madrid.

CHRISTINA ORTIZ: You can wear Speedos of you can wear shorts. You can wear I mean even a tanga if you want to.

GALLAFENT: A tanga is, I think, a type of thong worn by women and men. So really what Ortiz is saying is that in Spain anything goes.

ORTIZ: I mean you have to cover your sexual parts but even the girls can do topless.

GALLAFENT: In public swimming pools?

ORTIZ: Yeah.

GALLAFENT: Wow. And how often does that happen?

ORTIZ: All the time. People are used to it and I think, yeah, we’re more comfortable with the body than in other countries.

GALLAFENT: Americans take note. Next time you pack your bags for Europe you’ll need Speedos, board shorts, or in England a full-body wet suit and if you wouldn’t mind awfully. For The World I’m Alex Gallafent.

WERMAN: Now that’s what I call coverage. So do you Speedo or do you prefer shall we say a bit more coverage? It’s a kind of variation on the boxers versus briefs question. What’s your experience with the great Speedo debate? Just visit The World dot org and join our discussion on appropriate swimwear. Again that’s at The World dot org.

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