Going topless on the beach was never really about women’s liberation

A Story by liker

French women, who popularised topless sunbathing in the 1960s, have apparently retreated en masse into bikinis and swimsuits. Elle magazine says this is a “worrying sign of a regression in the place of women” in the nation. I’m not sure things are quite so simple. It’s perfectly sensible to abandon a strategy that isn’t achieving its goals. If the idea of unisex bathing kit was to desexualise breasts, then it didn’t work.

That’s hardly surprising. The woman who epitomised the emancipated glamour of 1960s St Tropez was Brigitte Bardot, who was known at the time not as a feminist but as a “sex kitten”. From the start, topless sunbathing was associated not with female liberation generally, but with female sexual liberation alone, which caught on as quickly as it did precisely because it necessarily liberated men too. It was OK to gaze admiringly at pictures of women’s breasts, and meditate on how fab it would be to have sex with those women, who, liberated as they were, would surely accept that very marvellous compliment with grateful enthusiasm.

Half a century on, and breasts remain controversial. In Britain, campaigners tirelessly collect names on a petition asking for the Sun’s page 3 to be dropped. In the US, conversely, Scout Willis trails topless around New York, exorting Facebook and Instagram to “free the n****e”. The SlutWalk movement holds protest marches in response to the suggestion that women should bear in mind what their outfits might say to potential rapists �" protests that provide a reminder that some people assume women dress to signal their general level of sexual availability to all total strangers. Plus ça change, as the French would say.

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The idea of topless sunbathing as an essentially practical and personal choice is all but lost. Mostly, back then, women wanted to sunbathe topless so they could get tans without tan lines, like men. One could then wear glamorous clothes, off the beach, without having strap marks all over the place. Or be naked in the bedroom, entirely alone or with sexual partners we had chosen, looking our best.

But, far from promoting the idea that women’s bodies, especially their breasts, were their own business, sexual or asexual according to the intentions of their owner, breasts became public property, with examples all over the media of how the very best breasts looked. If your own breast didn’t measure up, so to speak, then surgery was easy to come by.

Even if a young woman is perfectly happy with her breasts, then she will often be concerned about their future. Unsupported breasts may sag. Sun-exposed cleavages may wrinkle. And anyway, tan lines aren’t such a problem any more, when fake tan is considered a healthy alternative to sun exposure. Young women these days get their tan before they hit the beach. They do much else before unveiling their “bikini body” besides. Breasts, pale or otherwise, may no longer be a common sight on the beach, but neither are legs and underarms that are anything less than silky, nor single, shameful pubic hairs. A porn-led aesthetic has spread that promotes these ideas of unnatural perfection.

And in an age of digital cameras, few now wish for their chipped toenails to become an object of social media derision, let alone their breasts. You don’t know who might decide to take a picture, or where it might end up. The French know this better than anyone, since it was in that country that a powerful lens resulted in the breasts of a privately-sunbathing royal being plastered all over a magazine.

In such an aggressive cultural climate, it’s hardly surprisingly that women are deciding public toplessness isn’t quite worth the unwanted attention and presumption that it attracts. The move away from topless sunbathing is not really a sign that women’s bodily emancipation has regressed. It’s more a sign that what was supposed to be a liberation never did gain broad understanding, acceptance or respect, from the very start.