No sex, please, we're American.

This morning, I was in the kitchen eating breakfast and half-listening to the radio when something caught my attention. The local radio station does that sort of trivia game, where a listener who answers a general knowledge question correctly wins a pair of tickets to something or other. This morning, the question was about an American cartoonist - whose name was unfortunatly included in one of the halves where I wasn't listening - who drew mainly for children, but who caused an uproar in the States when he published some pornographic drawings. The question was, which European county still follows the U.S. in (officially) banning this artist's work? Or, as the announcer put it, which country is "as prudish as the Amis"? (It's the U.K., which the third caller guessed correctly).

The question, particularly the way it was phrased, struck me as interesting. I'd heard beforehand that Americans have a reputation for being prudish. During the whole Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, people pointed out that European leaders openly have mistresses, and no one gives a damn. And during my T.A. orientation in September, somebody asked what the best approach was if we were going over a text with the students and came to a sexually explicit passage - how we should handle it. After we all considered that for a moment, one of the other T.A.s said, "I don't think the Germans spend as much time worrying about that sort of thing as we do." Which made the group laugh.

It's true, though. People sunbathe in the nude in public parks here, and if you want to buy porn, you don't have to go hunting that far for it. And, like I've said before, the mayor is openly gay - when his party was re-elected last September, the papers all showed a picture of him and his life partner at a celebration - and it isn't really a big deal.

But what I heard on the radio also hit a little closer to home. I did my laundry last night. The washing machine is in the bathroom, and we (like most of environmentally-friendly Europe) don't have a dryer, so we hang up our clothes on a rack in the hallway. And I realized while I was pondering this question of American prudishness that I've never hung my underwear to dry in the hallway. My jeans and tops are there as we speak, but I hang my underwear to dry on the chairs in my room, so that laundry day in my room looks a bit like someone had a laundry-scented orgy.

Why do I do this? My roommates hang their underwear in the hall with their other clothes, and it's not as if I advert my eyes in shame whenever I see it. And I bought a new batch of underwear before I came, too, so it's not as if what I have is all full of holes or not fit to be seen. It's about as inoffensive as black cotton gets.

I guess the thought of my underwear hanging out for all to see just strikes me as odd. In that sense, I feel (which isn't always true, in both good and bad senses) very typically and prudishly American indeed.

Naked sunbathing is probably not something I should try just yet.