4

The Punks Of Burma

Docutopia

Though it's given painful birth to a bouncing baby democracy today, the small Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar (known as Burma on Tuesdays) spent nearly half a century under authoritarian military rule. But that didn't stop young Ko Nyan from digging through a trash can outside the British Embassy in the mid-'90s, finding a magazine article about Sid Vicious (a good 15 years after Sid had become fertilizer on Nancy's grave), and kicking off an underground punk rock movement in a country whose government actively, even violently, kept it isolated from the rest of the world.

Docutopia
Isolation: Not a good tool for killing punk.

3

The Skhothanes: Poor South Africans Who Wear Expensive Designer Clothes (And Set Them On Fire)

Motheo Modaguru Moeng

While apartheid in South Africa officially ended in the 1990s, its shadow still very much looms today. There's a whole generation that grew up in ultra-poor townships, not because of segregation as a state-mandated system but because of segregation mandated by economic necessity. Of course, the simple fact that you don't have two rands to rub together doesn't mean you shouldn't look like you just stepped off a runway in Milan.

Motheo Modaguru Moeng
"Swag? On. Fleek? On. Keeping it levels? 100."

The painfully fashionable young people above are the Skhothanes, derived from a Zulu word meaning "to boast." Under the searing South African sun, they gather in their Sfarzo Couture jeans (up to three pairs in layers, just in case the top pair isn't impressive enough), their Carvela shoes, and their Versace shirts, and ... they have dance-offs.

Ntsane Monaheng
Sponsored by [insert South African high-end champagne].

2

Free Body Culture, Aka "So, So Many Naked Germans"

via deutschland1880-1945.blogspot.com (NSFW)

The Freikoerperkultur (FKK), or Free Body Culture, is the German idea that naked is quite simply the way to be, and it dates all the way back to the late-19th century. As the wheels of industrialization plowed across Europe and freaked everyone out by replacing forests with pollution, many reformers in Germany responded to the increased urbanization with a marked decrease in clothing. Germany shared its nudist movement with the world in 1925 with the release of Ein Film Uber Modern Korperkultur (A Film On Modern Physical Culture), which achieved great international success, maaaaybe thanks to all the naked dancers.

Bodo Niemann/Munich City Museum (NSFW)
Then again, maybe not.

Germany continued to rock out with their cocks out right up until the Nazis pooped the party with all their strict laws on morality. Much to the Nazis chagrin, however, stuffing already nudity-obsessed people into stiff, uncomfortable uniforms only makes them want to take it all off. After the war, the German nudist movement came back with a vengeance, and today the country has some of the most relaxed nudity laws in existence. In Germany, a nude beach is just a beach. Public parks in Munich and Berlin have dedicated nudist areas. So many people hike the Alps au naturale that in 2009 Switzerland passed a law to staunch the considerable flow of naked Germans crossing their border. Which, honestly, would concern just about anybody.

1

The Stilyagi: History's Most Stylish Soviets

Richard Hume

In 1950s Soviet Russia, young folks were disenchanted by their fathers' baggy trousers and potato lines and yearned to ape the culture of America. Problem was, Soviet censorship being just shy of a George Orwell novel, they weren't always entirely certain what the hell said culture was.

via messynessychic.com
And yet they somehow managed to anachronistically mimic '80s American culture.

The result was a bizarre mishmash of Americana: tight, short pants and Hawaiian ties under zoot suit jackets, accented by James Dean sunglasses and greasy Tarzan hair. Derogatorily referred to as the Stilyagi, or Style Hunters, they rebelled in the precise way that would best piss off their Stalin-era parents: They didn't work, they danced to jazz, they bet on billiards, and they called themselves "Bob" and "Peter."

messynessychic.com
The girls were "Cindy" and "Jan."

It happened again when America collectively got naked and chased pretty colors during the Summer of Love in the late '60s. That's right: The USSR had its very own hippies. Like the Stilyagi before them, Russian hippies existed to tell The Man where to stick it. Their slogan -- "Better to work tomorrow than to work today" -- was a direct inversion of communist propaganda.

Lev Nossov / RIA Novosti
"From each according to his LSD, to each according to his weed."

Sadly, no amount of weed could cloud the fact that they were living under an oppressive communist regime. On June 1 of each year, former Moscow hippies gather at Moscow's Tsaritsyno Park to commemorate the day in 1971 when KGB agents gathered up their long-haired ranks and shipped them off to serve in the Soviet army, tossed them in jail cells, or locked them in mental wards. On the bright side, should you ever find yourself in Moscow on the first of June, you now know where to score.

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