Maragana Girl P.S. 01

Teenagers also can be punished at home by their parents, but it is considered dishonorable to punish anyone, especially an adolescent, out of anger. As with school punishments, there is a proper protocol for punishments at home. If parents want to punish a teenager, normally both parents and the adolescent will first go to the nearest Church and talk to a member of the Clergy. For the teenager to be punished, both parents and the Clergy member must agree that a switching is the best way to handle the offense. Upon receiving permission from the Church, the parents borrow a switch and return home with the teenager. The offender then undresses and lies across a chair for punishment. Once the punishment is completed, the teenager is required to return the switch to the Church and is not allowed to get dressed until that task is completed.

Vladim Dukov's handling of Anyia's temper tantrums over her school uniform was not typical of Danubian parenting. He avoided taking her to see his Priest, precisely because he knew that his daughter's behavior would have guaranteed the Church sanctioning a switching. Instead, he merely threatened her, wanting to give her one last chance to back down. Had Anyia not calmed down he would have felt obligated to take her to the Clergy to sanction a punishment. Maritza disagreed with Vladim's handling of the situation, because she was convinced that Anyia needed to be switched.

Danubian social values and fashion trends

Throughout most of their history, Danubian women wore off-white linen dresses and men wore gray linen pants with dark linen tunics. During the winter women wore shawls and men wore outer tunics. Both sexes wore sandals at home and in the city, but put on heavy boots while working in the fields. Public officials wore clothing similar to clothing used by common citizens, but with a gold griffin embroidered on the chest.

By the time Kimberly Lee and her friends went to Danube City as tourists, very few people were wearing traditional clothing on a daily basis. Casual and business styles were not very different from clothing worn in Western Europe, although Danubian clothes tended to be more simple and straightforward.

Danubian fashion underwent a profound change starting around 1970. Until 1970, almost all women wore traditional dresses and men wore either suits or tunics whenever in public. However, as the population increased and the price of Danubian linen went up, middle and working-class people began wearing imported cotton clothing and reserving their dresses and tunics for formal use. By 1980 Danubian factories were producing casual dresses for summer and denim clothing for winter. Many politicians in the Party of the Duchy lamented the change, but the truth was that traditional linen had become too expensive for daily use. The new fashion was due to economic necessity, not a transition in over-all values.

Danubians' attitude towards wearing underwear is ambiguous and largely depends on a person's situation. Men normally do not wear underwear unless dressed in an expensive business suit they want to keep clean. It is common for women dressed in casual clothing not to wear underwear, especially if en route to the beach, a pool, a picnic, or any other physical activity. Women normally wear panties while dressed for work, but bras are completely optional.

Public schools are much stricter; underwear is a required part of the school uniform for both boys and girls. However, boys normally ignore the rule about underwear if they feel safe that no one is going to check under their pants. Girls usually obey the rule (at least about wearing panties) because their skirts make it much more likely they will be caught if not properly dressed underneath.

Tattoos and piercings are completely unheard of in Danubia, because permanently marking the human body for decoration is considered a serious sacrilege against the Creator. Only once did Kimberly Lee ever hear about a Danubian who got a tattoo. The culprit was a university student who spent a year on scholarship in Belgium and returned with a medium sized tattoo on one of his upper arms. Upon returning to Danube City, the man was arrested by the Secret Police, stripped of his Danubian citizenship, and ordered to leave the country immediately. Following his expulsion, his parents and two sisters considered their household dishonored, and presented themselves to the Temple to perform public penance to atone for the disgrace he had brought upon them. The case caused a sensation in the Danubian press and horrified the Clergy. There was general sympathy for the dishonored family, but no one argued that they shouldn't perform public penance for their son's actions.

Braided Hair and "A Woman's Honor"

The tradition of women's hair braiding goes back to the origins of the Danubian nation. Since the emergence of the Danubians as an ethnic group, braided hair has been an important part of the national identity of Danubian women. 2,500-year-old frescoes and wall carvings portray Danubian women with their hair braided in the traditional manner. In a chronicle of his travels northward written in 350 BC, a Greek explorer described Danubia as a "barbaric land of arrogant and immodest women all dressed in long white robes and all wearing tightly braided hair". Christian missionaries from Constantinople described the Danubians with nearly identical words 1000 years later.

Proper hair is much more important to the average Danubian than clothing. Tightly braided hair is considered essential to a "woman's honor". While appearing naked in public is no big deal to a Danubian woman, to appear in public without having her hair properly braided is a considered a horrible disgrace and a severe violation of protocol. The importance of a woman's braids holds true even for sentenced criminals. The Ministry of Justice might deny a convicted woman the right to wear clothing, but would not think of denying her the dignity of keeping her hair properly braided.

In traditional Danubian village society, the first braiding marked a female Danubian's passage from a girl to a woman eligible for marriage. Before the advent of universal education during the early 20th Century, the first braiding always was given to a young woman by her parents as one of her 15th birthday presents, along with a new linen dress, gardening tools, a cow, and a set of dishes.

Urbanization and universal education changed the custom of braiding. In contemporary Danubian society a girl is not allowed to braid her hair until she has finished high school. Braiding became a young woman's graduation gift instead of a gift for her 15th birthday. The day before graduation the school principal issues legal certificates to all female seniors permitting them to braid their hair for the final ceremony. High school graduations thus are very emotional events for parents, because not only are their daughters graduating, but also they are presenting themselves in public as adults with their hair braided for the very first time.

Women need assistance to braid their hair properly. Hair braiding is an important bonding ritual between Danubian females. For example, when Anyia Dukov agreed to braid Kimberly Lee's hair, she was granting her American housemate an important gesture of friendship. The women of "Socrates' Mistresses" always braided each other's hair before performances. All of the singers agreed that fixing each other's hair before going on stage greatly helped them overcome stage-fright.

Normally women wash and re-braid their hair each Saturday afternoon. Because it is considered improper for a man (even a husband) to see a woman with unbraided hair, husbands and sons usually leave home while the women are washing and re-arranging their hair. Saturday afternoons are when high schools have their soccer tournaments. The games give men and boys expelled from their houses something to do while the women are fixing their hair.

Just as it is shocking for foreign tourists to see Danubians naked in public, it is equally shocking for Danubians to see foreign women with unbraided hair. Over time the sight of foreigners with unbraided hair became less of a concern to the residents of Danube City and Rika Chorna as the number of foreign visitors increased. However, that never became true for the rest of the country. If a female tourist visits a village or one of the smaller provincial capitols, she can expect to be constantly stared at if her hair is not done up properly.

If a foreign woman plans to spend more than a couple of weeks in Danubia, her hosts eventually will pressure her to braid her hair. Kimberly Lee did not braid her hair until she had been in Upper Danubia for nearly seven months, but that was partly because her hair was too short to braid during the summer she was sentenced. When she finally did ask Anyia to braid her hair, everyone in Kim's life was enthusiastic about the change.

During her first year in Danube City, Jennifer Thompson did not braid her hair because she still was in high school. However, when she graduated she attended the ceremony with her hair properly done up alongside her classmates. After the experience of being switched by her counselor in the school gym, she knew better than to outwardly challenge the values of her host country.

The Danubian legal concept of "custody" and its role in the lives of criminals

"Custody" is a key concept in the Danubian legal system. A person deemed undesirable by the Danubian courts automatically is placed under the custody of another person, who has the right to tell him what to do and is legally responsible for his behavior. A Danubian criminal officially is placed under the custody of his or her Spokesperson upon being sentenced. The Spokesperson becomes the criminal's legal supervisor and holds rights similar to the rights a parent has over an under-aged child. A Spokesperson has the right and duty to supervise everything a criminal under his custody does. The Spokesperson can grant or deny permission for a criminal to change jobs, study, have personal relationships, and conduct purchases. The criminal normally kneels before speaking to a Spokesperson, given the importance the custodian has in his or her life. The punishment for any disobedience against a Spokesperson is for the court to double the length of the criminal's sentence.

The Spokesperson has the authority to tell a criminal where he can live. In practice, most criminals return to live with their families. The only time a Spokesperson would order a criminal to live away from home is when the official believes the criminal's family is a contributing factor to his behavior. Having criminals remain at home is the cheapest and most practical way to house them and keep track of them. Living at home also provides the Danubian government with a means to inflict punishment not only on the criminal, but also the criminal's relatives. Having a member of the household forced to live naked and collared brings public shame upon the entire family, which is considered a serious violation of Danubian social protocol. In many cases a criminal's family will not allow him to eat at the table, but instead make him sit alone in the kitchen during meals. It also is quite common for family members to force a criminal to kneel when talking to them, given the social stigma he brought against the household.

The Spokesperson is required to officially surrender custody of a criminal during a switching. For the duration of the corporal punishment, the police officer holds temporary custody over the criminal, which is why a Spokesperson is powerless to assist a client while he is on the switching table. On the occasion Officer Vladik Dukov took control of the eight women from Eloisa's group, what he did was secure custody to prevent them from being placed under the custody of officers who wanted to abuse them.

When most people think about custody they are thinking about Spokespersons and convicted criminals. However, criminals are not the only people who can lose the ability to run their own lives unsupervised. Danubian law states that anyone with an identified addiction has forfeited any rights to exercise free will, and thus must surrender custody to another person. The most common example of non-criminal custody is an alcoholic who is placed under the custody of his wife. In such cases the wife assumes the role of the alcoholic's Spokesperson and must periodically report to the court about her husband's progress. The wife can run the life of her husband and even request judicial punishment if he disobeys her. Danubian men have a very strong incentive not to become alcoholics.

A final note on criminal sentencing. A reader asked me what happens in a situation where a person actually enjoys being naked in public and periodically switched. What if the person is a masochist and enjoys the conditions of a sentence? The answer is that in Upper Danubia there is no such person. The social stigma of being a criminal and the embarrassment it brings on the family far outweighs any possible enjoyment the subject might feel from being constantly naked. As for the switchings... the pain, the terror, and the utter humiliation go way beyond what a typical masochist might find enjoyable.

A person who wants to be publicly naked would have the option of performing public penance. Penance does not carry the same social stigma against one's family that being a convicted criminal carries and has no corporal punishment. However, a person wishing to perform public penance must discuss his situation with a priest, given that he is surrendering custody of himself to the Danubian Church as long as he is wearing a Temple collar.

The Danubian Pillory

Earlier in Upper Danubia's history, collaring was not the only way criminals were punished. Prior to the early 1900's, the Danubian police frequently used pillories to punish petty criminals whose crimes were not serious enough to warrant a formal sentence. The Danubian pillory was different from the ones used in England. Instead of restraining the offender's head and hands, the Danubian version was designed to force the criminal to stand with his or her arms and legs spread, leaving their body completely exposed to passersby. The offender was stripped and restrained, usually for about 8 hours or so on Market Day.

In this picture, taken in a provincial town in 1937, a young woman was accused of stealing a teapot from a market stall and restrained for seven hours in the main square. Besides being naked, the culprit's braids were undone and her hair loosened. In traditional Danubian society, the worst humiliation a woman could be subjected to was having her hair loosened in public. Having her hair loosened was even worse than being stripped naked.

If a criminal was subjected to the pillory, usually he or she was not switched. However, the humiliation was considered just as bad or worse than wearing a collar. Normally a person subjected to the pillory was expected to perform public penance for several weeks following the punishment.

The major cities quit using pillories after World War I. However, many villages continued to use them until the introduction of electronic monitoring of collared criminals during the 1970's. The last pillory sentence was given to a village shoplifter in 1978.

As foreign tourism became popular during the Dukov administration, interest in Danubian history, including pillories, renewed an interest in old judicial practices. Several towns frequented by tourists rebuilt their pillories, complete with the original chains and cuffs. Guides dressed in nineteenth century police uniforms explained the tradition to visitors.

Tourists could experience the pillory for themselves, by volunteering to get undressed and be restrained for 30 minutes. For many foreigners it was an intensely erotic experience to be chained naked and immobilized for a half an hour, completely exposed in a public location while crowds took their picture. Pillories became so popular with tourists that Danubian guidebooks always mentioned which towns had reconstructed pillories open to the public.

The life of Tiffany Walker-Dukovna after her sentence

A reader became interested in the fate of my character Tiffany Walker following the completion of her thirty-five year sentence. He asked me how, after spending most of her life naked and collared, she would adapt to life following her release. Of course, at age 56, Tiffany's two sons would be fully-grown and have children of their own, while her custodian Kimberly Lee-Dolkivna would be approaching retirement age. So what fate awaited Tiffany following her release?

The way I envision Tiffany's life unfolding during her final years is as follows:

At the time of her release her husband Vladik Dukov was the Director of the Danubian National Police, after working his way up through various positions as a cop. During the administration of his father, Vladik became the Chief of Police for Danube City, and shortly before his father retired, Director of the entire Danubian police force. From that position he moved up to becoming the Minister of Defense, largely due to his father's lasting influence on Danubia's politics. However, Vladik always saw himself as a cop, and within a couple of years left the cabinet to return to his job with the National Police where he finished out his career.

As for Tiffany, she spent three decades working directly under her Spokeswoman and taking orders from her. She felt perfectly comfortable with her position in Danubian society as a criminal and official assistant to her Spokeswoman. Tiffany's role in Kim's office was mostly supportive, but Kim's job would have been much more difficult without having another American as her assistant. Tiffany also had some clients of her own and was raising two sons, so she felt useful in life.

The prospect of not being under the custody of her Spokeswoman terrified Tiffany as her release date approached. She felt that she was not suited to live without a custodian, so she began to search for a solution to her situation. She did not feel confident placing herself under the custody of her husband, because she felt that Vladik was too close to her to control her behavior, discipline her, and keep her out of trouble.

Tiffany finally settled her dilemma by placing herself under the custody of the Danubian Church. On the day of her release, she made special arrangements to not receive the traditional dress, but instead to exchange her criminal's collar for a Temple penance collar. The day of her release a priest accompanied her to the courthouse and collared her as soon as her criminal's collar was taken off. Tiffany immediately went from being a criminal to performing public penance. The court officially transferred her custody from Spokeswoman Kimberly Lee-Dolkivna to the Danubian Church.

Tiffany's professional life and her work relationship with Kimberly Lee-Dolkivna faded after she put on the Temple collar. She continued to work with the clients she already had, but took no new ones. Instead she spent more and more of her time at the Temple of the Ancients in religious training, with the goal of becoming a Temple Attendant.

Upon retiring from his post at the Danubian National Police, her husband Vladik Dukov joined her. The couple handed over their house and retirement savings to their sons, took a vow of poverty, and spent the rest of their lives sleeping on a mat on the Temple floor. (They never considered turning over their house to the Danubian Church, because the religion does not allow members taking a vow of personal poverty to dispossess their children.) The couple remained in the Temple during the final years of their lives, permitted to leave only to see their sons, grandchildren, and growing number of great-grandchildren during holidays and family reunions.