What followed from such a strong cultural tradition was probably to be expected. After this week's cover up, France rose as a single woman to protest against this encroachment against what she regards as an "essential freedom".
In previous summers, the French have fought over the full-coverage burkini, which is banned by a number of resorts and most municipal swimming pools. Now it has reconciled over its polar opposite. The Gendarmerie Nationale apologised for the "overreach" of two mere "reservists". Darmanin tweeted that "Liberty is a precious asset"... the latter word being the operative.
What's fascinating is that, despite the rallying cry to preserve the right, topless sunbathing has dramatically decreased in France. A recent study by polling group IFOP revealed that from the 43 per cent of women who chose to ditch their bikini tops in 1984, only 19 per cent still brave the sun for a perfectly tanned decollete.
Many of the respondents said that they were afraid of leering or worse: an effect of MeToo, but also of a climate where women are insulted because they wear short skirts – as happened to one young woman in Paris last year, when a bus driver told her "you should dress properly" and refused to let her board.
Although we still do not understand the foreign obsession with "wardrobe malfunctions" (the American hullabaloo at Janet Jackson's collapsing neckline at the Super Bowl in 2004 bemused us), we are perhaps more aware of the coarsening of street harassment, with legislation to issue fines for cat-calling on the street and public transport introduced in 2018, and 700 men penalised in the first year.
I've never gone topless, for two reasons. The chief one was that I decided early on that I didn't like roasting myself in the sun. I have the kind of pale skin that burns to lobster-red before I manage to achieve, with great effort, exactly the same "tan" that's indistinguishable from everyone else's winter colouring. The other is that I have, not to put a fine point on it, large boobs, given to unattractive wobbling – exactly the Donald McGill seaside postcard type kind that got one ogled even in the liberal 90s.
Our German neighbours now win in the topless stakes: 34 per cent of women there say they sunbathe topless or in the nude (and in a country whose beaches are on the North Sea). In Spain, many women, remembering the Franco years, make a political statement of going topless. We French women find that topless works best for those of us unfairly blessed with model-thin looks and flat chests – the kind that allows you to wear any fashion, or indeed no fashion at all. In France, where chic is as competitive as it is performative, it's mostly been about scoring extra points.
It comes as no surprise that the three women on the Sainte Marie La Mer beach were in their 60s. They lived through the sexual revolution, when sex was good, female desire mattered, men were not the enemy, and the occasional cat-call was not confused with assault. (Honestly, when construction workers whistle at me in the street, I take it as a welcome pick-me-up, and walk with a jauntier step.) Today's hectoring is very different.
And so is fashion. Coco Chanel, who ushered in the new cult of sun worship a century ago, is now considered as the Mother of All Skin Cancers. Deeps tans are passe. We know the sun damages our complexion, is the first cause of melanoma, and that once you've used up your "tan capital" – from the very first moment when, as a small child, you are let out without suncream – your epidermis becomes defenceless.
The leggy, tanned models of the 90s catwalks have been replaced by equally leggy, pale waifs now favoured by edgy designers and couture houses alike. The one fashion plate that still sports a tan is, significantly, the Louis-Vuitton armoured Brigitte Macron, 67 – a singularly unafraid woman.
Britain was never at the fighting front of topless bathing. Britannia rules the waves with her breasts modestly covered – perhaps understandably, given the British summer climate – whereas Delacroix's Liberte storms a Paris barricade in 1830 with her chest proudly exposed.
Still, les Petites Anglaises, much beloved of the French, from Jane Birkin to Charlotte Rampling, went with the flow from the 60s onwards. One of my English colleagues recalls asking their teacher if they could sunbathe topless on their school French exchange in the 80s. This is now a thing of the past. To us French, your new prudishness looks like reverting to Victorian type. But we would say that, wouldn't we?
