I enjoy being topless on the beach quite a bit. I like sunbathing and swimming, preferably without any plasticky swimsuit whatsoever, but it not being a nudist beach, topless will do. Anyway, I've been considering it.
Personally, I consider it quite empowering. I don't think this excessive hiding yourself is good for you psychologically. A friend was shocked. She was telling me how she went with some friends and her boyfriend to a nudist beach. Laughed at the dicks and the titties. I asked, well why didn't you get naked too? She said oh no, I wouldn't have dared. It would've been awkward.
Not really. I mean, presumably your friends have privates. You might not think about it actively (or might, I dunno) but you assume what they have under the clothes. It's a bad mentality, that you have something to hide. It fosters an even worse mentality, that your whatevers aren't enough. Your tits are too small, your nipples are too large, your ass is too meaty (or too bony), your dick... well, psychological treaties go into that, so I won't.
You get what I mean. The more you keep things in the dark (literally), the more that sort of fear and feeling of inadequacy flourishes.
Being able to take your top off on a beach as a woman, however, is an enormous privilege, one I'm well aware of. Every day, I'm reminded of those phony bathing suits (so-called) they had even 100 years ago that covered at least half the body.
I also think about how such acts could easily label you as a promiscuous woman and as such, in need of stiff punishment (leaving the pun there, lest things turn dark as we go forth). Heck, considering the EU's loose immigration laws, one doesn't have to look far to find a pair of beady eyes aggressively trained on one's breasts. All seemingly hailing from the same part of the world. All evidently thinking what a lawless place the EU is and what dirty bitches European women are.
So, you know, you don't have to stretch the imagination to understand how different your action might've been perceived a brief while ago even in Europe.
Yet most European men seem to be growing desensitized to titties. I mean, you know, they still occasionally stop and gawk. I love watching men stare at titties. Not rapey, violent men, just average joes on holiday with the wife. So transfixed. It's funny and harmless mostly.
But I'm noticing a lot of men don't look at the many free tits surrounding them (and topless bathing is very popular here). At first, you're tempted to say well yay for us, we finally moved past that ridiculous impediment. They're treating them as natural and no longer gawking.
Except, is that what's happening? I was scanning the crowd on the beach the other day when it dawned on me - another important change from a couple hundred years ago (or even 70 years ago) is that nudity has gone from a cherished, illicit rarity to a commodity. At your fingertips 24/7. And only a small part of a very explicit, very bold, very crazy sexual background.
I mean, if you spend enough time on the Internet, you'll probably come to accept it as a given that women randomly spend their afternoons jacking off a monkey while sticking their foot up someone's bum. And that's just your average Tuesday. In a world like that, what's there to gawk about a pair of loose titties?
I'm wondering if this seeming sexual freedom, something one would at first take as a positive sign, is actually signaling a darker commodity in our midst? Maybe the reason Jack's not looking at my naked breasts on the beach isn't that society has advanced, merely that he spent all afternoon watching them on his laptop.
Does it matter, as long as you're free to be topless anyway?
Very much so. Because this argument implies we see one another as meat. And that's never good. Look what we do to cows and chickens and all that. Never a good sign when you start seeing another creature as a hunk of meat.
It's not strictly feminist, either. It seems to me modern culture has been gradually desensitizing us to the magic of another human body. And though, arguably, I don't think women consume as much pornography nor are as predisposed towards it, we seem to be falling into this trap, too.
For good reason, we've been focusing our efforts (for many decades) towards curbing that base sexual instinct when you see a naked woman, though I don't think we stopped to consider the alternative. While sexual desire may carry its own perils, sexual apathy (which seems to be rife in a generation that's more deprived of sex and more confused than ever) is worse.
What do you think?
