page_title: Toplessness
section_title: Topless swimwear
hierarchical_section_title: Toplessness / Topless swimwear
caption_attribution_description: Beach in Cannes France 1980
context_page_description: Toplessness refers to the state in which a woman's breasts, including her areola and nipples, are exposed, especially in a public place or in a visual medium. The male equivalent is barechestedness, also commonly called shirtlessness.
  Exposed breasts were and are normal in many indigenous societies. However, developed countries have social norms around female modesty, often enforced by legal statutes, that require women to cover their breasts in public. In many jurisdictions, women who expose their breasts can be prosecuted for indecent exposure, although public breastfeeding is often exempted from public indecency laws.
  Social norms around toplessness vary by context and location. Throughout history, women's breasts have been featured in art and visual media, from painting and sculpture to film and photography, and such representations are generally defended on the grounds of artistic merit. Toplessness may also be deemed acceptable on educational, medical, or political grounds. At many beaches and resort destinations, especially in Europe and Australia, women are either formally or informally permitted to sunbathe topless.
context_section_description: Toplessness in a public place is most commonly practised or encountered near water, either as part of a swimming activity or sunbathing. The introduction of the bikini in 1946 and increasingly common glamour shots of popular actresses and models on either side of the Atlantic wearing the minimal swimsuit design played a large part in bringing the bikini and sunbathing into the mainstream.
  In 1964, fashion designer Rudi Gernreich went further and designed and produced a topless swimsuit, which he called the "monokini" in the United States. Gernreich's monokini consisted primarily of a brief, close-fitting bottom that "extended from the midriff to the upper thigh" and was "held up by shoestring laces that make a halter around the neck". It first appeared in print in Look magazine, introducing the concept of a topless swimsuit into commercial fashion. He later said he didn't really mean for the swimsuit to be popular as it was, but rather as a fantastical concept and prediction of the future. "[Women] drop their bikini tops already," he said, "so it seemed like the natural next step." A photograph of Peggy Moffitt, the famous model for the suit, appeared in Women's Wear Daily, Life and numerous other publications.
  Despite the negative reaction of fashion critics and church officials, shoppers purchased about 3000 of his swimsuit design at $24 each that summer, though the only woman reported as having worn it to a beach in the United States was arrested. The novelty of the design caught significant attention. Life writer Shana Alexander noted in an article about the introduction of the monokini in July 1964, "One funny thing about toplessness is that it really doesn't have much to do with breasts. Breasts of course are not absurd; topless swimsuits are. Lately people keep getting the two things mixed up."
  The topless swimsuit failed to catch on in the United States. The Soviet government called it "barbarism" and a sign of social "decay". The New York City Police Department was strictly instructed to arrest any woman wearing a swimsuit by the commissioner of parks. In Chicago, a 19-year-old female beachgoer was fined US$100 for wearing a topless swimsuit on a public beach. Copious coverage of the event helped to send the image of exposed breasts across the world. Women's clubs and the church were particularly active in their condemnation. In Italy and Spain, the Catholic Church warned against the topless fashion. In France in 1964, Roger Frey led the prosecution of the use of the monokini, describing it as "a public offense against the sense of decency, punishable according to article 330 of the penal code. Consequently, the police chiefs must employ the services of the police so that the women who wear this bathing suit in public places are prosecuted." At St. Tropez on the French Riviera, where toplessness later became the norm, the mayor ordered police to ban toplessness and to watch over the beach via helicopter. Jean-Luc Godard, a founding mover of French New Wave cinema, incorporated a shot of a woman in a topless swimsuit on the Riviera into his film A Married Woman, but it was edited out by the censors.
  A number of Caribbean locations, especially those that were formerly French and Dutch colonies, permit nude and topless sunbathing, like the French West Indies islands of St. Barths, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St. Maarten.
  Topless sunbathing slowly spread to other Western countries throughout Europe and Australia, many of which now allow topless sunbathing on some or all of their beaches, either through legal statute or by generally accepted practice, and beaches were designated for nude or topless bathers. A topless, or top-optional, beach differs from a nude beach in that beach goers of both sexes are required to keep their genital area covered, although females have the option to remove their tops without fearing legal prosecution or official harassment.
  However, media reports in recent years note that the number of women sunbathing topless on French beaches has markedly declined, and that younger French women hav
caption: Cannes beach (1980)
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