Laws and Social Norms
In Tonga, it is illegal for men to appear in public without a shirt.
In New Guinea and Vanuatu, there are areas where it is customary for the men to wear nothing but penis sheaths in public - this is uncommon in more developed areas. Women wear string skirts. In remote areas of Bali, women may go topless. In America there are nude beaches and in China women have started wearing only the top of their traditional dresses baring their legs entirely to copy west .
In the United States, a few businesses or restaurants display dress code signs requiring shoes and shirts, claiming to be there on account of a health code, although no such health codes exist. Also, it is common belief that there are laws against driving barefoot. However, no such laws exist. It is quite uncommon for people to be nude in public in the United States. However, there are a few private beaches and resorts that cater to such a population.
Read more about this topic: Dress Code
Famous quotes containing the words laws and, laws, social and/or norms:
“The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms ... you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
“There never seems to be any difficulty in stretching the laws and the constitution to fit any kind of a political deal, but when it is proposed to make some concession to women they loom up like an unscalable wall.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)