Fresh Sqeezed Repression

As I sat in the sterile hospital lobby waiting my turn, I watched a woman casually drinking a tall glass of beer in the nearby cafeteria. People are dying, birthing babies, and having organs removed in this place, I thought, but there’s always time for a beer at the Krankenhaus.

My mind continued to wander as I waited. Krankenhaus. What a silly name. It literally translates to “sick house.” Kinda depressing if you ask me, but that’s certainly not going to stop this strict, rule-abiding, judgmental society from enjoying their favorite malted beverage. Only in Germany.

As I pondered the irony of the situation, my name was called.

“Frau Molinari, bitte, kommen Sie mit.” My stomach jumped with nerves as I trailed the nurse down the corridor. I’d heard so many outlandish stories about German mammograms and gynecological exams, and I had no idea what was about to happen.

The disturbing rumors that circulated on the military base all involved unabashed public nudity. One version described a mammogram waiting room full of German women sitting in chairs nonchalantly reading magazines, completely naked from the waist up. There were other German mammogram stories, but all involved groups of women together in various settings, all completely topless and acting like it is no big deal.

An American nurse at the base clinic told me about her recent gynecological appointment at the German hospital. She had to completely undress in one room, and without a stitch on, exit the room, go down an empty hall, enter the exam room, then sit alone and naked on the table and wait for the doctor. When the doctor finally appeared, she had to submit to the exam, feet in stirrups and all, without so much as a Band-Aid for cover. When it was over, the doctor threw her a small hand towel, apparently for her to cover up her not-so-private-anymore parts. I could not imagine the hand towel offering much comfort after being naked for that long.

After three right turns, I was deposited into a small windowless room with a padded examining table, a sonogram machine, and a floor to ceiling mammogram contraption. As I spied the clear square plastic plates for flattening one’s body parts into pancakes, I felt a psychosomatic twinge of pain.

“Take off your top and bra and wait here,” the nurse instructed in English with a thick accent. I never knew where to put my clothes during doctor’s appointments. Hanging my bra over the sonogram machine didn’t seem right, so I bundled up my little stack of clothes so that no undergarments were showing, and placed them neatly on the chair. Now what do I do.

Standing there topless and uncomfortable, I tried to channel the casual German attitude toward nudity. Americans appreciate freedom above all else, but when it comes to our bodies, we are ironically restrained and judgmental. Germans on the other hand believe that “this is what God made” and see nudity as a simple fact of life, nothing about which to be ashamed or embarrassed. How did American settlers deviate so drastically from their European heritage when it comes to nudity? Was it the influence of the Puritans or some accidental divergence in our cultural evolution?

And why is it that Americans are famous (or infamous) for being so open and friendly to strangers ÔÇô it is no big deal in the States to sit at the bus stop and tell a complete stranger your life story, to include the stuff about Uncle Pete’s gambling addiction and cousin Wendy’s bastard love child ÔÇô but God forbid we expose our bits and pieces to the doctor without the protection of a paper gown?

I recalled being in a Michigan YMCA locker room when I was in my 20s. I had just finished a chilly swim, and thought the heat of the sauna would warm me up. In my suit, I sat alone in the tiny hot wooden box waiting for my pores to respond. After a few minutes, in walked a little old lady wrapped in a towel. She was one of those cute old folks whose body is shaped like a golf ball on a tee ÔÇô thin legs and arms with a plump little torso. I scooted over a bit and she sat down.

“Oh Gosh, this feels great,” she said as she unwrapped the towel to expose her nude body. I turned my head away and pretended to be interested in the caution sign mounted on the door.

“I do my best to stay fit, which isn’t easy at my age,” she said, stretching her legs out in front of her. “Yea, it is important to stay healthy,” I responded without looking.

“Well, I do my calisthenics every day without fail, and by golly, don’t you know, I never get sick,” she rattled away as I tried to find reasons to not look in her direction.

“See, look at this ÔÇô I’ll show you my ten basic stretches, you should try ÔÇÿem,” and at that, I had to look or risk being rude. I wanted to stare into her eyes, but seeing her stretches necessitated taking in her entire wrinkled form. For the next 15 minutes, she twisted, squatted, pivoted and bent over in the tiny space just inches in front of me, completely nude. As she chatted away about her flexibility, I saw every crease and crevice of this little old lady’s body, and she thought nothing of it.

Unsuccessful at my attempt to be comfortable with being topless in the mammogram room, I tried to distract myself by inspecting a poster over the examining table showing various photos of some anonymous woman’s breast smashed between the two clear plastic plates. Ouch. Looking down at my own aging parts hanging wearily before me, I hoped that there would be some advantage to having less-than-perky middle-aged breasts. With any luck, my parts would be more malleable and surrender to the barbaric machine without pain.

The German nurse finally arrived and was all business. She led me over to the mammogram machine, and instructed me how to properly place my breast between the plastic plates. As my left side spilled onto the bottom plate, she ordered me to “Now take your right breast and take it away.”

Take it away? What? I know I am a bit droopy and all, but does she understand that it is actually attached to me? I tried to do as instructed, and pulled my right breast awkwardly toward my right side. She pressed a button and the top plate lowered. I tried to look ahead, but I could not help but watch as one of my quintessentially feminine body parts squashed helplessly into a large white crepe. I felt twangs of pain in my rib cage and left armpit as the plate mercilessly continued its descent.

“Are you feeling pain?” she asked. “No.” I whimpered, and she dropped the plate a few more millimeters. My eyes watered and I held my breath as the machine took images of my grotesquely deformed parts.

Ten minutes later she was done with both sides, and I felt like a deflated balloon. Generously, she said I could put on my shirt without a bra, and take a seat on the examining table to wait for the doctor who would come to perform the sonogram. The doctor arrived promptly, and sat directly in front of me on a stool.

“Hello, I am Doctor M├╝ller. Please take off your shirt,” he pronounced, and I hesitantly pulled my shirt back over my head. I laid down on the table as instructed.

“So how long have you lived in Germany?” Doctor M├╝ller asked as he noisily squirted globs of clear gel onto my chest. “Flplpt! Flplpt!” the bottle obnoxiously emitted as I tried to carry on a normal conversation. After 30 seconds of idle chit chat, the doctor performed the sonogram in a flash and pronounced me healthy and normal.

He shook my hand, threw two tiny hand towels at me and left the room. I am not sure if the towels were for modesty or to clean up the copious amounts of gel, but I was glad to see them nonetheless.

I used the little towels, and before throwing them into the designated basket, I saw the emblem on the front. Krankenhaus. Hmm…I could really use a beer right about now. Suddenly more appreciative of the Germans’ drink of choice, I slipped back into the security of my clothing and went on my merry repressed way.