Thinking about “toplessness”

This summer I went, with three friends, to my first topless beach in Spain. It was a day typical of the days we were there, sunny and breezy and somehow hot without being oppressive. Because we had a free day (we were students studying in a writing program in Barcelona for two weeks), we took the train to the beach at Sitges, a small city southwest of Barcelona.

None of us had ever been to Sitges before, so when we arrived, we made our way downhill, walking the winding, narrow roads hoping to find the water when we reached the bottom. And we did. A gorgeous expanse of white sand under our feet and a 17th century seaside church, Sant Bartomeu i Santa Tecla, overlooking the beach—I’d never been anywhere so perfect.

We purchased two sets of beach chairs for the day and settled back against the blue and white canvas to enjoy the sun. Well, I didn’t settle quite as quickly. I tend to do a lot of adjusting and sun screening while I make sure my plastic bottle of water is nearby and my book is opened to where I last left off, but when I finally leaned into my towel-draped chair, I took my first good look around, and everywhere I looked, up and down the beach were boobs. Big boobs, small boobs, boobs pointing straight down and boobs with a perky little nipples turned up (like a button nose); there were light pink nipples and the rich red nipples of nursing mothers and every nipple color in between; little girls ran alongside their mothers; little boys, teenage boys, fathers, friends held hands with and talked to and shared ice cream with topless women. Did I say they were everywhere?

I guess I was staring because my friend Julie said, “Isn’t it great!”

And I guess I am more than a little inhibited and was more than a little embarrassed by my unworldly staring because I said, “What?” as if I didn’t understand what she was asking when I understood completely that she had noticed me noticing all the boobs.

“All the boobs,” she smiled. “Isn’t it great!”

I have to tell you, we watched them all day long. I watched a family, a topless mother with two sons—a teenager and an eight year old—and a teenage daughter have a picnic on the beach. And you know what? They did all the things a normal family would do having a picnic, they drank water from plastic bottles, they unwrapped thin ham sandwiches on white bread and laughed and talked while they ate them. They were right in front of me, not ten feet away, and they weren’t embarrassed. The boys weren’t freaked out because their mom and sister didn’t have tops on, and the mother didn’t cover herself up when she took the cellophane wrappers and the water bottles to the trashcan. She walked, casual as can be, through rows of sun- bathers, her little boy in tow and never once did I see her move to cover her exposed chest. It was mesmerizing.

Julie and I talked about it all day, how different it must be to grow up in a culture where boobs weren’t so sexualized, where they were just part of your anatomy. How amazing it would be to grow up, never experiencing that white flash of embarrassment when you finally understood why you had to wear a t-shirt while your brother and his sweaty friends were free to peel their hot shirts off.

Oh sure, I may be romanticizing the topless beach, the laissez-faire boobery on European beaches, but still there has to be something to it, huh?

–Bridgett