Banish the Boobs: UK Feminists Want 'Lad Mags' Removed from Shelves
You can see them on the shelves on any British news stand - men's magazines with pictures of near-naked women plastered across the cover. Two prominent feminists groups are calling for them to be removed from public site or face legal consequences.

France Falls Out of Love with Topless Sunbathing
THE GUARDIAN: Health concerns and new feminist priorities mean French women are covering up on the beach

Photo: The Guardian
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