Going topless is still seen as tacky — yet for women it’s truly liberating: SAMANTHA BRICK explains why British women should cast off their inhibitions and bikini tops
- British women get remarkable hot and bothered over being ‘beach body ready’
- Samantha Brick says that our attitude has been shaped by decades of sniggering
- Now at 51, the UK-based writer reveals that getting over body problems means to be comfortable with nudity
Last month, my husband, Pascal, and I got into our car and headed south, checking into a gorgeous bijou hotel on the Med.
After a late afternoon arrival, I decided to get some of the still-strong French sun on my body.
The hotel was small and each room had a private terrace overlooking the sea. I’d already wriggled into a string bikini and, after getting settled on the sun lounger, I whipped off my top, applying sunscreen all over.
Within minutes, the tuts of disapproval started up. They were coming from the balcony next to ours, and when I opened my eyes, there on the other side of the dividing screen stood a woman with an expression of genuine horror on her face.
British women get remarkable hot and bothered over being ‘beach body ready’. Samantha Brick says that our attitude has been shaped by decades of sniggering
Now look, I’m not an exhibitionist and I certainly wasn’t trying to make anyone feel uncomfortable. The person doing the tutting had to peer — and I mean really peer — over the screen in order to see me.
But, of course, I immediately sat up and reached for my bikini top.
It turned out she was one half of a rather staid couple — he in red trousers, she in a roomy floral dress — who were having early apéros on their terrace. And while on this occasion I tied my top back on, it annoyed me, later, that I’d given in to her.
I mean, really! In 2022… is a woman sunbathing topless still something to get cross about?
A month on, I haven’t stopped thinking about this episode. I have tried to put myself into the woman’s rather frumpy shoes, and, yes, I can imagine she is far less at ease with her body than I am. Why else would she have reacted this way? Would she have made any fuss if her husband hadn’t been present? I do wonder.
But there was a broader cultural reason for that tut of disapproval, too. She was British and, on the subject of topless sunbathing, the gulf between French and British women is as broad and chilly as the Channel.
Samantha, who lived in France for 14 years believes that British women overthink nudity and the female form, while the French just get on with topping up their tans
British women, after all, still get remarkably hot and bothered over the concept of being ‘beach body ready’, as if the very idea of displaying the female form is inherently sexist or objectifying.
I have lived in France for 14 years and, in my view, British women rather overthink all this, while the French just get on with topping up their tans.
It’s not as though all French women own goddess-like figures. They, too, have cellulite on their thighs, delicate crepe lines on their decollètage and knees which sag southwards.
And while France doesn’t have the obesity rates of the UK, we’re catching up — a report last year showed 17 per cent of the adult French population are obese.
But that hasn’t dented the wondrous self-confidence of French women, who own and show off their glorious female forms with pride — imperfections and all.
Over the years, as I’ve come to admire this French attitude, my inhibitions have lowered accordingly. Sure, I know my body isn’t perfect, but who owns a perfect body?
It’s odd, I suppose, to flaunt my naked form more confidently at the age of 51 than I ever dreamed of doing at 30. The very idea of whipping off my top back then struck a very different emotion into my heart — not confidence but fear.
In the UK, our attitudes have been shaped by decades of sniggering, seaside postcard-style humour and, even now, toplessness is seen as tacky or indecent.
The sophisticated French do not have those juvenile hang-ups and, for women, it’s truly liberating.
Now, granted, I haven’t had children so have never breastfed. Everything appears still to be defying gravity and I am a perky 34B. But even if I were not, I don’t think I’d feel any shame whatsoever about baring all — in France at least.
It was very different when I moved here. Take one Sunday morning at our village market when we received an impromptu invite to a lunchtime pool party. We didn’t need to go home, the couple declared — anything we needed for a swim, we could borrow.
Samantha says this fundamental difference in perception of the female form is very much part of everyday life. There isn’t a watershed hour on our screens like there is in the UK, and the French grow up used to seeing breasts on TV all the time
After a delicious lunch involving much pain, vin and some deliciously ripe cheeses, everyone started to strip off to jump into the pool.
Well — I was agog. I don’t think I’d ever seen so many boobs, bums and bits in one setting.
There were children of all ages around, too. But did they laugh and ogle? Not at all.
There wasn’t a whiff of sexuality or seediness about the afternoon. These women were wives and mothers, yet no one was comparing or looking at anyone else’s body. They were simply enjoying themselves in the sunshine.
Brits would never have done this, of course — it would seem scandalous in front of children, and in an all-adult setting, the prelude to, well, a very different kind of party. For the French, it’s the norm.
Fast forward to today and I’m that woman who will strip off at the drop of a hat. And take it from me, there is nothing more gloriously satisfying than swimming in the sea or a pool as naked as the day you were born. As for sunbathing topless, almost anything goes here. Women of all ages and sizes regularly whip off their blouses in parks to get a blast of sun in their lunch hour.
At the weekend, the beaches are chock-full of women from 18-80 in just a pair of bikini bottoms. No one judges because no one cares.
One fellow expat friend loved sunbathing naked in her garden, too. Unfortunately, she was so regularly scolded by her British (who else?) neighbours that the police got involved.
But, luckily for her, their complaints fell on deaf ears. After a box-ticking exercise involving a thorough inspection, the conclusion of the local gendarmerie was simply that ‘Madame may continue to sunbathe nude in the garden’. Of course she could!
Indeed, most of my neighbours have pools or solarium areas specifically designed as sun traps for just such body worship.
By June, most midlife women have a bronze hue that can’t be achieved from a bottle. In their pretty sundresses, it’s perfectly obvious there are no tell-tale bikini tan lines either.
This fundamental difference in perception of the female form is very much part of everyday life. There isn’t a watershed hour on our screens like there is in the UK, and the French grow up used to seeing breasts on TV all the time.
No one bats an eyelid. Naturist holidays are just as popular here as they are in Germany, and even my in-laws enjoy them. While I am still possessed of enough British reserve not to go completely nude, I applaud those who do.
Now I’m in my sixth decade, I can see that the secret to not having so many body issues is just to get comfortable with nudity.
Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a body positive movement in France. Yes, French women are getting bigger, but French women of all shapes and sizes have always been very much a part of French culture.
It’s no surprise to me that there’s never been a need to publicly prove that a larger woman can be as sexy as a petite one.
Want to feel truly confident? Then, like the French, we must stop viewing naked breasts as shameful or purely about sex, and embrace topless sunbathing as a liberation.
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