Support the Dirndl!

As if we needed any additional proof that the EU's legislative body should die a quick (and painful) death, Laurie Morrow sends word that the professional busy-bodies in Brussels are trying to outlaw the Dirndl (helpfully pictured above), the traditional garb sported by barmaids in Bavaria. Limp-wristed über-legislators, such as Wolfgang Kreissl-Dörfer, a Bavarian Member of the European Parliament, are invoking the Orwellian "Optical Radiation Directive" of the EU -- that would be the amount of sunlight these health police (I hesitate to say "Nazis") believe fair-skinned maidens should be exposed to in the line of duty.

According to the Daily Telegraph:

Bavarian bar keepers have been told that the dirndl, generally rather revealing, will have to be replaced as it offers no protection against what the directive calls "natural sources of radiation", meaning sunlight.

Employers now face heavy fines if they fail to protect their workers from the threat of sunburn or skin cancer.

"This is European law-making at its most pedantic," said Munich's mayor, Christian Ude. "A waitress is no longer allowed to wander round a beer garden with a plunging neckline. I would not want to enter a beer garden under these conditions."

A spokesman for the Bavarian Hotel and Restaurant Union said: "I have spoken to lots of waitresses and none of them have told me that sunburn in the décolleté area has ever been a problem."

Organisers of the world's biggest beer festival, Munich's Oktoberfest, which habitually attracts more than six million visitors a year, were particularly angry at the proposed ban. "This is an attack on the traditions of a region," said a spokesman.

Well said, Herr Oktoberfest Spokesman. This isn't your typical leveling effect, after all, for it covers up a local tradition via the type of legislative diktat only EU types could love.

Note, too, that the concern here isn't modesty (heaven forbid!), but health. How typical of the nanny-state to drape life's delights in swaths of sanctimony. What's next from Brussels: mandatory Chairman Mao coveralls?

And by the way, since it's supposed to be close to 100 degrees here today, I'll take one of those liters of brew, if you please.

Update: Laurie Morrow of True North Radio, who kindly sent me the link to this story, adds:

As a woman, I just think it's terribly, terribly sweet when governing bodies tell women how to dress to protect themselves.

French & German EU members interested in learning more fashion tips concerning the protection of women needn't go beyond their own borders. Time-tested ideas as to how women can protect themselves from the sun's blazes and unwelcome male gazes can be readily obtained from radical Islamicist fashion mavens, whose pieds-à-terre are French and German immigrant neighborhoods.

Perhaps the impetus behind this legislation is the appeasement of this segment of French and German citizenry.

Whatever the motives behind the dirndl ban, a lady's dirns are her own business -- not Wolfgang's. Thank God the British still allow mad dogs, Englishmen, and even their barmaids to go out in the noonday sun.

Update II: (Sunday) The dirndl's future, like its past, looks good. I've posted on recent assurances by EU types that Bavarians have been heard in Brussels.