Opinion: Women don't want to sunbathe topless any more – and this is why

'It doesn't take a team of scientists to tell us why the body parts my trainer once referred to as "largely excess body fat" are so powerful in their symbolism'. Photo / 123RF

OPINION:

Where do you stand on breasts? Bosoms, knockers, bazookas, melons, orbs, globes or baps? And I don't mean from an aesthetic perspective. As any "old master", man or woman will agree, they can be nice to look at. Also, unarguably useful, what with their ability to feed miniature humans, to develop their immunity and central nervous systems. No, I'm talking about where you might stand from ethical and political perspectives. Because we seem to have got ourselves into quite the tangle about these apparently innocuous female body parts.

By "we", I mean women. According to a new study, published in Sexuality and Culture journal, when more than 300 men and women were shown images of topless women in different scenarios and locations and asked to rate them on levels of appropriateness, women were far more likely to be offended by the sight of bare breasts in public than men. And while it's hardly surprising that men are more amenable to chance sightings of boobies, the notion that women are "on average two points" less favourable is both paradoxical and telling. About the contorted female state of mind, about first, second, third and fourth-wave feminism – or wherever the hell we are with the waves today. About how we want to be perceived, what we should be, and how much dissonance there is among women on both counts.

This time last year I was taken aback by the sight of two teenage girls sunbathing topless in Holland Park. Then I was taken aback by the fact that I was taken aback. Until a few years ago, I'd always sunbathed topless on European holidays: for tan-line reasons but also because I enjoyed the feeling of freedom. That freedom (and so many others) was killed off by the iPhone (and others of their ilk), which I suspect is the real reason behind the annual headline: "Is Topless Sunbathing Dead?"

Those two girls were proof that it isn't – quite. I wasn't offended by their bare breasts, but as a mother I found myself worrying about who might be lurking nearby, ready to zoom in with the sophisticated technology we all have at our fingertips, and for some reason the context didn't seem right. Which makes no sense when you consider that we were still in a pandemic credited with "liberating the breast" from the "curse" of the bra – an echo of the famous bra-burning movement of the late 60s and early 70s.

Fast forward to 2022 and bra firms are in danger of going bust, as many still refuse to go back to the "breast corsets" they gleefully dispensed with, alongside heels, during lockdown. Gen-Zers are particularly vocal on this. They'll tell you that going braless is both an unashamed affirmation of femininity and the ultimate expression of equality, as epitomised by the 26-year-old actress Florence Pugh, who faced an absurd online backlash from the smelling-salt brigade when she wore a sheer pink tulle Valentino gown to the designer's haute couture show last month.

Pugh hit out at critics in a lengthy Instagram post. Photo / Getty

Just last week hundreds of people marched in Brighton as part of the "Free the Nipple" campaign to challenge "the double standard of nipple censorship, body shame and unwanted sexualisation." Yet according to the Sexuality and Culture findings, women are more guilty of those double standards than men.

"There's kind of a paradoxical pattern," agrees one of the study's authors, Professor Colin Harbke of Western Illinois University, "where the data suggests that women police other women's behaviour ... and they do so by ascribing a notion of morality." That's science-speak for: "Women are judgy." Which we are. And while social media is admittedly a misogynistic universe and it's always tempting to blame the patriarchy for creating intrasexual competition between females, I'm not sure that's true here.

I don't dress up for a date with a girlfriend because we'll both be show-ponying around the pub, rivalling one another for male attention. I do it because I want to look good to her and for her, and I know that female approval is harder to get than male – as confirmed by this study.

It doesn't take a team of scientists to tell us why the body parts my trainer once referred to as "largely excess body fat" are so powerful in their symbolism (and yes, I did urge him never to use that phrase in his dating life). They represent sexual power and, of course, maternal power, and even if the patriarchy were to be erased overnight, I'm pretty sure those things would still cause friction – or what the study calls "offence" – among women. Which is no bad thing. We can all survive a little offence.

Men are OK. Women are OK. It's the breasts I pity. All they ever asked for was to exist, peacefully, healthily and comfortably within or without a bra. But now they must be angry, militant: rebels without any clear, cohesive cause.