As a Teenager in Europe, I Went to Nudist Beaches All the Time. 30 Years Later, Would the Experience Be the Same?

In July 2017 I wrote one article about toplessness for Fashion Italy. Director, actor and political activist Lina Esco had emerged from the world of show business to challenge public nudity laws in the United States in 2014. Free the nipple. Her film took on a life of its own and, thanks to the support of Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne and Willow Smith, among others, eventually developed into an entire political movement, especially on social media where the hashtag #FreeTheNipple spread rapidly. . The same year as that piece, actor Alyssa Milano tweeted “me too” and encouraged others who had been sexually assaulted to do the same, building on the movement activist Tarana Burke had founded more than a decade earlier. The rest is history.

In there Fashion article, I spoke with designer Alessandro Michele about a shared memory of our favorite topless beaches from our youth. Everywhere in Italy where water appeared – be it the noisy Riviera Romagnola, the traditionally chic Amalfi Coast and the Sorrento Peninsula, the dizzying cliffs and coves of Italy’s continuation of France’s Côte d’Azur or the towering volcanic rocks of the mythological Riviera dei in Sicily Ciclopi – you would undoubtedly encounter bodies of all shapes and sizes, topless of course.

In the 1990s, when I was growing up in Italy, naked breasts were everywhere and no one thought anything about it. “When we look at our childhood photos, we recognize those imperfect breasts and those bodies, each with their own story. I think about the ‘unbeauty’ of that time and feel like this is actually the ultimate beauty,” Michele told me.

In fact, I felt the same way. My relationship with toplessness was part of a very democratic cultural status quo. If every woman on the beaches of the Mediterranean – from the sexy girls sunbathing to the grandmothers eating spaghetti al pomodoro from Tupperware containers under umbrellas – wore equally naked body parts, then somehow we would all be on the same team. No hierarchies were identified. In general, there was very little censorship of bare breasts. Free nipples appeared on the covers of magazines on newsstands, whether they were tabloids or art and fashion magazines. Breasts were so naturally part of the national conversation and aesthetic that Ilona Staller (aka Cicciolina) and Moana Pozzi, two porn stars, co-founded a political party called the Love Party. I have a distinct memory of my neighbor hanging their party banner out of his window, with a topless Cicciolina winking.