Naturism isn’t for everyone. For whatever reason, many people will say ‘oh, no, I could never do that!’. Obviously, as a naturist myself, my response is that the fear of getting and being naked is much more worrisome than actually being naked. However, I’m not much into adopting a line of argument that runs ‘try it, you might like it’.

I would never, ever do a bungee jump, for example, and no amount of cajoling me along the lines of ‘try it, you might like it’ would persuade me to be tied to a rubber band up a crane somewhere. No. It won’t ever happen.

So I never try to hard-sell naturism to anyone.

Here in the UK, and around Europe, though, it’s likely that a majority of women -a large majority of women- of all shapes and sizes and ages, have gone topless, even if it was only once on holiday. My RL friends know we’re naturists, and a couple of years ago I was at a hen party when the subject came up and I did my usual little speech about freedom from costumes, a sense of liberation, having swum naked you’d never go back, etc, and got that ‘I couldn’t do what you do’ response from some of those in attendance.

I asked the company (I think there was around 18 of us) who’d gone topless and got a 100% response! All shapes, sizes and ages. Yes, for some it was one hour while on holiday somewhere, bikini top on again as quickly as they could, for others it was the beginning of a life-long policy of going topless, but still…we’d all gone topless at one point or another in our lives.

In Europe, many (most?) beaches can be considered to be ‘topless’ beaches. No one bats an eyelid. Being topless has very much become the norm, and you’ll see it in locations you wouldn’t expect to, from the Mediterranean to some windswept beach in Scotland. No one cares.

 

And why should they? Breasts…nipples…men have been topless since the 1930s and no one thinks of that as anything but normal beach behaviour. Indeed, a man in some vintage full body one-piece swimsuit would be regarded as substantially more weird than a man in a thong.

On holiday, perhaps for the first time with friends rather than family, there’s sometimes a sense of peer pressure being applied. Indeed, it was peer pressure from a naturist cousin that paved the way for my own entry into the naturist lifestyle, and I suspect it’s not much different when going topless.

 

Imagine a group of girls going off on holiday…there’s always going to be one who’s braver (or more experienced) than the rest, and letting ‘the girls’ go free is something that’s often picked up on by others in the group, to emulate or impress the alpha female(s). Eventually, there’s just one left, a shy, reluctant member of the party, for whom the act of going topless is akin to a trip to the dentist. But, 9 times out of 10, she’ll take that step.

Subsequent generations have then grown up with topless being ‘the norm’ and think nothing of it. Sure, they may limit their topless sunbathing to holidays, and would never dream of it at home, but even if ‘the girls’ are covered up for the next fifty weeks, you know that they’re also allowed to go free same time next year. Nowadays, in Europe, you’ll see many 70 year olds going topless, as it’s how they’ve done things for 40 years and there’s no reason to change now. Many, many women will never embrace full naturism, but they see topless sunbathing and swimming as the norm.

Ella