... And the Girls of Holland

Since Homer's Day, and before, men have trekked off to the farthest reaches of the globe and returned with tales of the gentle beauties they met on their travels—creatures of surpassing grace and understanding, ministering angels who demanded nothing of the male but the privilege of devoting their lives to his care and comfort. These maidens, so the stories went, stayed lovely forever, were unbelievable lovers, fantastic cooks, eternally faithful—and thrifty to boot.

Only lately has this rosy mythology begun to dim, as massive population shifts and jet-age mobility have combined to bring about an unprecedented mingling of the sexes from different cultures. Like the age-old stereotypes of Parisian girls as chic, Oriental girls as submissive and Latin girls as passionate, the postcard image of Dutch girls as clog-shod tulip tenders is—happily—vanishing down the long road into oblivion, hand in hand with the concept of the Dutch people as a nation of stolid burghers. Holland has been transformed. With the recent emergence of Amsterdam as the youth (continued on page 167)The Girl of Holland(continued from page 137) change have begun to stir more than the windmills.

At first blush, Dutch girls don't seem much different from their urban counterparts in other European countries. They are influenced by virtually the same tastes. moved by similar social currents and inspired by more or less identical aims in life. But there are a couple of notable distinctions, one of which is the female Hollander's capacity for candor. Not every one of them, if asked what she likes doing best, would reply, "Eating, drinking and fucking"—as did one in a very candid conversation with a Playboy interviewer—but few would regard this response as particularly outrageous. A visitor accustomed to the word games that characterize so many male-female encounters elsewhere would be agreeably disarmed by the forth-rightness of the Dutch.

What may impress him even more is the astonishing variety of beautiful girls he'll see on the streets—statuesque Nordic blondes, bronzed belles from Aruba and the other islands of the Netherlands Antilles, dark-eyed sirens from former Dutch territories in Southeast Asia. Holland is also the nation in which the pleasant marriage of the miniskirt with the bicycle was consummated. Dutch men are so accustomed to the sight of miles of bare legs flashing past on bikes that they scarcely pay any attention, but foreigners who find themselves in a Dutch city on a warm day often ignore its historic attractions and station themselves by the side of the road, hoping for a strong breeze.

If modern Dutch girls—particularly those in go-go Amsterdam—appear to be unburdened with the guilt of so-called conventional morality, it's because they question and often reject its validity, preferring to respect their individual consciences rather than the rules once imposed by authority. "We make up our own minds," says a vivacious 23-year-old Catholic, employed as a hotel receptionist. "I go to church because I believe in God and the pill, not in the Pope. He wouldn't pay for an abortion if I needed one and I don't see why I should go without sex just because I'm single. What a stupid, old-fashioned idea!"

Of all the profound changes that have shaken the structure of this small, densely packed democracy, the most important have been effected by the youth of both sexes. Unlike their counterparts in the politicized U. S. youth movement, whose espousal of violence has frightened off potential sympathizers (and, predictably, brought about even stiffer repressive measures by the established order), young Dutch men and women choose to work within the system. Already they've scored victories at the political level; three candidates in their 20s won seats on the city council last summer. And the bluntest instrument of social protest they employ is humor, as the Dutch women's lib demonstrated when a faction known as Dolle Minas went out into the streets and onto the public-transportation system of Amsterdam last year, grabbing handfuls of masculine bottoms. Dolle Minas translates roughly into "Crazy Women," and its activists—who have no objection to being known as crazy women—also carried their campaign for equal rights into the sanctuary of the street pissoir. They demanded, reasonably enough, that these strictly male conveniences be opened to ladies, too.

But even the Dolle Minas have not been very active in recent months, perhaps because Amsterdam is simply not conducive to prolonged hostility between the sexes. Sooner or later, everyone—male and female—seems to end up peacefully coexisting in this city, which has rapidly become the cosmopolitan crossroad for much of young Europe as well as of young Holland. Distances are short and transportation excellent within the Netherlands, and the girls of The Hague, Rotterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht, as well as those from the countryside of Zeeland and the Brabant, flock to Amsterdam in search of excitement. They almost always find it. The city exudes an almost tangible sexuality; the red-light district holds a promise not merely of sex but of a mysterious something more. The lights in the windows are warm and pink, and their reflections twinkle invitingly in the dark waters of the canals. A couple of policemen stop at one of the doorways and chat amiably with a lissome young Indonesian girl about her mother's influenza. They move away tactfully when a customer approaches, bid him good evening and cross the canal bridge to resume their duties, hands clasped behind their backs like a couple of worker priests making the rounds of an errant congregation.

In Amsterdam's two biggest entertainment areas, the Leidseplein and the Rembrandtsplein, the bars, cafés and discothèques are alive with young people—and the air in many of them is thick with the smoke of Red Lebanese, Congo bush and other exotic weeds. Although the possession of psychedelics is otherwise illegal in the Netherlands, the city has granted permission for their use on certain premises, such as a club that used to be a church. Scores of female American visitors wander through its many rooms, more freaked out by the city council's liberalism than they are by any form of dope.

Hollanders regard practices officially condemned as social aberrations in other Western countries—including our own—as merely aspects of the human condition. Homosexuality, pornography, prostitution and drug use are more than ever part of the human condition in 1971, and the young women of Holland, no less than the men, sensibly regard them as such. If there is something unique about Dutch girls, it's their straightforward approach to all these facts of contemporary life. They have discovered something that should surprise nobody: that a society does not necessarily disintegrate if it acknowledges and accepts itself, not as all the good burghers might wish it were but as it really is.