法国女性为什么不再祼露上身晒日光浴？_BEC初级作文

法国女性为什么不再祼露上身晒日光浴？

Valeria Costa-Kostritsky, a Paris-based writer, is 32 and sunbathes (not topless) in Britanny and Côte d'Azur. She says the change hasn't happened overnight: "I've never seen young women doing it loads. But some women over 50 do."

Pfeiffer agrees that the shift has been generational: "Family albums here can be a strange thing, as you flip through three generations of bourgeois bra-less women." But she maintains that "French women of most ages have, as far as I can remember, sunbathed topless."

What of the links between breasts and activism? Nudity as a political statement is no new thing – indeed, proverbially speaking, the personal has always been political – but, thanks to the internet, it has become a mainstay in the world of political activism: in France "showing your breasts wisely (a dodgy street will always be a dodgy street, so you have to act responsibly) can be a political statement," says Pfeiffer.

Costa-Kostritsky thinks the decline could be linked to health concerns, but these are less about skin damage and more about vanity: "Women of my generation have always been told that the sun was bad for our skin. But add sun damage to gravity and the fear is you won't have pretty breasts."

Pfeiffer agrees: "The ones who do it all look the same – slim and small breasts, which contributes to keeping a social order and aesthetic norm in place."

But both agree that the issue is not one of self-consciousness. "[French women] feel comfortable doing it!" says Pfeiffer. The real reason French women cover up, says Costa-Kostritsky, is because "it makes uncovering them for a lover more interesting".