Silence means consent

Since France's summer-vacation season kicked off in early July, the press has repeatedly sounded the alarm over the shrinking number of topless women on the nation's beaches. As eagle-eyed reporters have made quite clear, the prevailing trend among sun-loving women these days is to actually use both pieces of their bikini. Le Monokini, C'est Fini! shouted Le Parisien in its July 21 report from a Mediterranean beach, using the preferred term for one-piece toplessness. "Nude Breasts Are Less Trendy" concurred the free daily Metro France. "The fashion has become common, and as a result, less appealing," explained sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann in an accompanying Metro France interview. Some observers, including Kaufmann, have noted too that the return to the two-piece is a response to rising concerns about skin cancer.

But the more concealing swimwear trend is also part of a wider social movement by younger French women who are shunning the less inhibited habits of previous generations. If burning bras and going topless were the ways French women of the 1970s and '80s demonstrated their freedom, their daughters and grand-daughters seem less comfortable with exposed flesh. "We're seeing a return to more [conservative] and family values," said Kaufmann. "Modesty and discretion are in fashion now."

A survey titled "Women and Nudity" released by polling agency Ifop captures the move to cover up. It indicates younger French women not only have a problem with nudity but actually consider themselves prudish. Fully 88% of the women questioned qualified themselves as pudique — a term that can mean anything from modest or prim to full-blown priggish.

And they aren't joking. Though 90% said they get naked with their husband or partner, nearly 60% actively avoid being nude around their children. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they also refuse to undress around women friends. About 22% said they considered a woman in her underwear already naked.

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With sensitivities like those, it's little wonder that the poll also found that French women had strong opinions about public nakedness. Nearly 50% said they were bothered by total nudity on beaches or naturist camps, and 37% said they were disturbed by publicly exposed breasts or buttocks. Forty-five percent of respondents reported they'd simply prefer to see a lot less flesh — male or female — hanging out in full view.

Those attitudes got even more pronounced with respondents ages 18 to 24. Fully 25% of women in that age group described themselves as very pudique, and 20% said they considered any nudity tantamount to indecency. That, sociologists say, helps explain the changing scenery on French beaches. Younger women disinclined to bare their more private parts make up the majority of female sunbathers; those still willing to go topless are usually older French women who blazed the trail all those years ago. Or as the Times of London's website phrased it, "Only the Oldies Go Topless on French Beaches."