Appropriate or not?

[Colwyn]

Oooh! An entire clan of highlanders.

[WordBird]

I'm with you, Menthol, but sadly it's not going to change anything.

You know as well as I that the mentality is "I'm on holiday so I'll do what I like" and "If the locals don't like it, they need to remember we're spending our money here and paying their wages." 

[Colwyn]

Last year I was rather surprised to see a young woman (maybe 18-21 years) walk into a full bar wearing only a skimpy bikini and buy a couple bottles of Efes to take away. She was Turkish and so was everyone else in the bar except me (no-one there spoke English, again except me). Does that make any difference? Should I have felt offended? Nobody else seemed very bothered.

[BernieTeyze]

On one hand you have traditional Turkish scarf wearing Muslims on the other the all singing,all dancing bar boys,encouraging the sale of alcohol and dancing provocatively. Hotels serving full English breakfasts with pork bacon. How can anyone tell which is the proper Muslim/Turkish way with so many contradictions of lifestyle. If they want people to holiday and keep to Turkish/Muslim traditions then that's what should be on offer.

[lissa]

What? Muslim traditions? Surely you don't mean that?

[Menthol]

Religion isn't something I really bore in mind when I made my post. Neither the question of offence either.

Being offended as we know is an arbitrary and rather personal issue. I find the sight, sound and very existence of David Cameron highly offensive, many others do not.

More to do with personal embarrassment I suppose. I'm embarrassed for the 'perpetrators' and embarrassed for the rest that have to see it. I completely uphold the right to personal freedom and perhaps I'm hoping for too much when I would like that AND some consideration for others too.

Signed: me (already got the stipulated three children, don't need birth control [hahahahahahahahahahahaha!] and dress fairly modestly so as not to embarrass firstly myself and secondly my family and friends).

PS: despite me making a deal about inappropriate clothing, got to admire the sheer sass of the older lady I saw at 9am this morning striding along the Ovacik top road in bikini, walking boots, rucksack and with a hiking stick. She meant business!

[Colwyn]

More to do with personal embarrassment I suppose.

Menthol, I think a lot of CBF members will agree with you.  I tend to do so myself. But I am wary of projecting my embarrassment onto our Turkish hosts. I remember Turkish resorts where, on the beach, there could be (what I supposed to be) a Turkish peasant woman walking into the sea in her everyday field clothes; a Turkish middle-class woman in full, designer swimming suit; and a Turkish woman in a bikini. They might all be of the same age. They, at minimum, tolerated each other. In fact the “designer suit woman” and the “bikini woman” might well be bathing together – but class-divided (not religion-divided) from the “peasant woman”. I have enjoyed the Turkey where the three women could enjoy the same beach. This Turkey is under attack by the Erdogan Government; splitting the country 50/50 into camps of “Westerners” versus “Pious”; and Erdogan is absolutely committed to ensuring that the “Pious” prevail and impose their values on the rest.
 
This has been an extremely heavy-handed response to an innocent complaint about British bikini wearers in supermarkets. Perhaps it is irrelevant.  Sorry.I just went off on a roll about second-guessing what other nations’ cultures, values, feelings etc. might be and the wishes of the citizens in respect of this.

[Jacqui Harvey]

Seen it all now..  Went to Bella Mamas last night and we always note that people do seem to dress up a bit more smartly there.   We arrived about 9.15pm.
There were four ladies sitting opposite us.  One who was a very large lady possibly a size 20-22 (nothing wrong with that) was wearing a black bikini with an almost see-thru  poncho over it.  The sides where open so there was a great view of her thighs the bikini bottom etc.  She had on a pair of rubber beach flip flops.   She walked passed us a few times to sit on the walk opposite to smoke and use her phone.  I noted the waiters looking at her each time she got up.  She left about 10.30pm.  I am sure she must have been feeling a bit chilly at this time.  I don't think I have ever seen someone in bikini at this time of night in the restaurants of Calis.

[kevin3]

  She could have been one of your "ladies of the night,"   Heard there are a lot of them down your way.           

[Jacqui Harvey]

No they were very white, very just arrived and very Southern English.