French Topless Sunbathing on the Decline

Posted Jul 23rd 2009 at 1:31PM by Bee-Shyuan Chang (Subscribe to Bee-Shyuan Chang's posts)

Filed under: News

Brigitte Bardot keeps her top on while lounging with friend Laurent Verges at Club 55 beach in St. Tropez, June 1973. Photo: AFP/ Getty Images

Put your top back on s'il vous plaît! At least that's what a new generation of female French sunbathers are saying.

While the country's First Lady Carla Bruni may be famous for her revealing past, France is nevertheless seeing a decline in topless sunbathing among young people, reports the UK's Guardian newspaper.

While this may be taken lightly by other, more prudish countries, the French have historically been stubborn in their half-naked pursuit of stunning tans. Topless sunbathing was considered a women's rights issue in the late Sixties, and the French government refused to ban semi-nude sunbathing in the Seventies.

Now historians are puzzled by a recent topless backlash, with 18 to 30-year-olds buying more one-piece swimsuits, motivated by "new feminist priorities, skin cancer fears and a rebellion against the cult of the fetished body beautiful," according to the Guardian.

Meanwhile one particular group of young, militant feminists called Les Tumultueuses are fighting for just the opposite -- topless bathing in public swimming pools, saying that men's and women's bodies should not be treated differently.

In a recent poll, however, over 50% of French women would go topless if in the privacy of their own yard. What would you do? Would you go topless sunbathing? Leave us a comment below.

Tags: France, summer, sunbathing, topless