The politics of topless sunbathing

I’m pretty certain that what I’m about to say is essentially unsayable. So here goes: we need to have a frank conversation about boobs. Bare boobs. Because on my recent holiday to Majorca, I have to confess to being a little astonished to see quite so many topless women on the beach.

But what a simple joy it was; old, young, lithe, voluminous, ponderous – there they were in all their glory, glistening or wilting in the sun, or simply splashing about in the sparkling water. Boobs.

I know, I know… as a straight, white, privately educated man in the raw good health of middle age this is not territory that I’m completely comfortable venturing into. And perhaps I shouldn’t. But I feel this needs to be said.

You see, I had assumed in our new age of Puritanism that something as old-fashioned as topless beach-going was now borderline verboten. It’s like dressing monkeys up to sell teabags or smoking in the car with your kids in the back: if it’s not been banned outright then it’s certainly frowned upon and only a couple of years away from attracting a custodial sentence. Even in France, where topless sunbathing was once de rigueur, over the past decade the number of women willing to do it has fallen by a third.

So imagine the joy at discovering that toplessness survives; like diminutive whalers heading out into the savage Arctic waters on boats hewn from logs to catch the last minke before doomsday, in at least one corner of the Mediterranean you’ll find ladies – many presumably still identifying as such – routinely venturing to the beach to swim and sunbathe topless. You can smoke and drink on the beach, too, if that’s what floats your boat. I know, it sounds crazy. Nicotine and nipples. It’s like the 1970s never died in this corner of the planet.

Yet this wasn’t some time-warp location where Alan Whicker lives on. Nor was this a beach of specialist interest set aside for sexually deviant or modishly adventurous folk. No, this was on a standard beach in the here and now, one with small children (including my own) with buckets and spades, watched by mums and dads and grandparents; one with teenagers and young adults relaxing and reading, undisturbed by responsibility or care about anything except the battery life of their iPhones.

From what I saw most of Creation was on show – with little concern about an upper age limit, either – and it was all seemingly accepted rather happily without arousing comment, or anything else for that matter. It was perfectly ordinary and couldn’t have been any more natural if David Attenborough was doing the voiceover. Nothing about it appeared to be seedy. It’s just what it is. Yes, folks, there are breasts out there, just as there used to be on the ten franc note. Vive la revolution!

I was struck by the realisation that perhaps going topless in the Mediterranean vs going topless in Britain is rather like continental café culture vs the British pub. There are some things that simply don’t travel. In Majorca, it’s not about voyeurism or titillation but simply being comfortable in one’s skin. Which is perhaps why it was, in a sense, unremarkable. But could the same be said if it was happening on Brighton beach?

Over dinner with a Norwegian couple we had met we discovered that they too were rather surprised by the toplessness, but they felt the same way: it was innocent and, well, rather a good thing all round, so to speak. Neither wife disapproved either, rather against recent research which showed that women are more likely to be against the practise than men. (That said, my wife did comment on one young woman who sat alone on a rock, shoulders thrown back, her back arched to give the world a fuller appreciation of her figure. ‘Did you spot the surgical scars?’ asked Mrs M. Naturally I swam over for a closer look.)

Before advocating routine toplessness on the beaches of Sussex, Devon, Dorset or Essex, I will concede that perhaps, like French lager, this species of exhibitionism doesn’t warrant importing. Arguably the British are too buttoned-up to go topless here. But what I will say is that in an age when you can be cancelled for staring too long at ‘The Birth of Venus’, and when we have highly vocal and politicised groups of people of various genders or neither, it was a joy to be on holiday from the culture wars in a landscape of innocence.