THE GUARDIAN: Health concerns and new feminist priorities mean French women are covering up on the beach
For some it's the stuff of naff Cote d'Azur postcards. For others it's a symbol of the feminist struggle in France. Topless sunbathing was once the summer battleground of French post-1968 society – educated middle classes insisted that peeling off was a women's right, while family groups claimed exposed nipples would scare children.
For decades, France has prided itself on being the world capital of seaside semi-nudity. Now the nation is facing a bikini-top backlash. A younger generation of women are covering up, citing new feminist priorities, skin cancer fears and a rebellion against the cult of the fetished body beautiful.
French academics and historians have spent the early summer months pondering the sociological meaning of the demise of France's once-favourite piece of beachwear, the "monokini" – the bottom half of a bikini with no top.
Since the 1970s, when the French state refused to ban "le topless" on beaches, women's semi-nudity has become a symbol of summer in France. It was a point of national pride that the same freedom to strip off in public was off-limits in other more prudish nations such as the US.
Women's bodies have always been the centre of national social debates in France. Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right Front National once produced a poster warning against immigration which showed carefree French topless sunbathers in the 1990s against a doomsday prediction of burka-clad women invading French beaches in the year 2010. >>> Angelique Chrisafis | Wedneday, July 22, 2009
