Lack of toplessness on beaches

[Medoc1968]

Smartphones with cameras are just one important reason. Equally devastating is the power of the advertising industry. When the bodice industry went bad for a decade from the end of the 60s in the braless period, the underwear was invented in bright colors. It became the norm to show the bra straps. The majority went with that fashion, and finally the bodice industry made sales again.
Today, social media is defining what woman wears. And again, the advertising industry is driving it.
Women are tired of being compared to photoshopped ads.

[coupleak]

Just found this 30m video.
Zandvoort beach in The Netherlands, 25 years ago ... topless heaven.
Before the internet became known and popular, somebody was filming with a (rather big) camera and nobody objected.

https://www.dumpert.nl/item/100039021_8d92d1fd

To view it, you must create a free account and set the NSFW option to allowed.

[familleplage]

Originally Posted by coupleak

Just found this 30m video.
Zandvoort beach in The Netherlands, 25 years ago ... topless heaven.
Before the internet became known and popular, somebody was filming with a (rather big) camera and nobody objected.

https://www.dumpert.nl/item/100039021_8d92d1fd

To view it, you must create a free account and set the NSFW option to allowed.

Thanks a lot for this video, this is how it was !
I've seen this video a long time ago, thanks to remember it.

[Erii]

Originally Posted by visa0061

The issue is acceptance and normality of it. You'll see Barcelona beach walks on YouTube (before they get removed) where the women look right at the guy filming and make absolutely no attempt to cover up, turnover, etc. It's just how it is there. In Spain, and other countries, women going topless at the beach is just how they tan.

Not any more it's not. There is a small %, like I said I'd estimate maybe no more that 5% of local, mainly older 40+ women, who will be tanning topless on Spainish beaches but that's it these days. I was there today on a beach near Barcelona where it is mainly spainish, German and Dutch holidaymakers, and I saw 4 pairs of tits all day, out of maybe a couple of hundred women in bikinis. Long gone are the Spanish, French, Greek beaches of 20 years ago where most locals and foreign tourists would be topless. Europe has changed remarkably in that respect in a generation.

[coupleak]

Originally Posted by Erii

Long gone are the Spanish, French, Greek beaches of 20 years ago where most locals and foreign tourists would be topless. Europe has changed remarkably in that respect in a generation.

Agreed, same in Belgium, the Netherlands and even in Scandinavian countries.
That said, I do notice a shift in more people visiting nude beaches or looking for less crowded beaches to tan topless or naked.

Last time we were in Denmark, I literally saw 1 topless lady (50+) on a (crowded) public beach.
However, we do love to hike and picknick in nature/on the beach. We have encountered a few dozen people in more secluded areas, of which at least 80% were topless, but mostly naked (including my own wife).

[Mogli1960]

My wife was always naked or at least topless at the beach. With the development of digital photo cameras and the popular high resolution phone cameras she started to be more "vigilant" to guys walking around and doing this important telephone calls in our vicinity. Now with two daughters and a son, we still go to nudist beaches, but my wife and the daughters "scan" the whole area before they drop any clothes. They prefer to stay at least a hundred meter away from any stranger (they figured out that this is the minimum distance to ensure they cannot be recognized on photo).
This leads to very funny moments. When I see my daughters running out of the water like being chased by a shark, but reason is that a beach "walker" is approaching and they do not want to be stuck in the water until the guy is further away, I often have to laugh. But it happened once that one of these guys were actually hanging around to wait and see them leaving the water. My wife got aware of it and approached the guy while our son was running to the waterline with towels for the girls to cover up.

[familleplage]

My wife is still topless at the beach, even this year.
But she will not if some friends from my son are with us, as she don't want have photos from her shared by this young guy, not for her, but for my son.
As she said, she will not be the shame for our son if some images should be shared on any social network in regards to our son.

But for her self, she don't care. It's how she is and there many pictures that have been taken from her in the past.
I have even seen some friends photo albums , photos from the 90's where she's topless with her friends.
That's normal, that's how she is.

Also, we already met some peoples we know a the beach and she was topless. And again, as she's at the beach, that's not an issue.

We were at lake 2 weeks ago with friends, nobody was topless so she kept her top on.
One daugther from our friends had some troubles with her bikini top moving, a nipple showed up, my wife told her to remove it, and she will do it too, but the girl did not, and unfortunately my wife kept it on too.

[Erii]

A couple interesting observations I've made reflecting on my recent time in Spain, after the initial crushing disappointment of the lack of topless sunbathing.
Firsty, topless sunbathing does still happen. Over-the-counter course of the daycare the beach I estimated about 5%. However, these were almost always is little pockets on the beach. Some times the women were friends; the small groups of couples I saw where all the women had she'd their bikini tops made me incredibly envious - the women looked great and confident. But almost always there were women sunbathing topless near each other who didn't know each other, but were clearly encouraged to expose their breasts when they saw others close by that were also. There was one spot where every day I knew a Spanish group would turn up and their ladies would go topless. We made sure we sat close to them and sure enough other women outside their group would start to reveal their tots too. Unfortunately this didn't give my wife the courage to follow suit, but I hope this strategy will on future visits now I've seen it play out with others.

Secondly, once I realised that women weren't now lying with their tits exposed all day in case someone snapped a photo of them, but not necessarily because they had suddenly got more prudish re anyone seeing them, I realised that there were still a lot of tits to see, just not on show permanently.
I made sure I sat near some if the showers between the beach and the camping area, and also kept a casual eye on who was looking like leaving soon. Sure enough refocusing my attention to that I say a dozen more pairs than I would have just looking for topless sunbathers. There was one English mum who lay with her bikini top on (in various states on untidiness) all day without ever exposing her tits whilst sunbathing. Then 4pm comes around, she walks off the beach to the open shower area, pulls her top off over her head, and rinses the sand off her topless for 30 seconds, all the whole with me casually enjoying her tanlined tits and big nipples. She must have though the chances of a photo were much lower that way so it was low risk until she wrapped a sarong around herself.
So perhaps this is the future. Perhaps I can persuade my wife to be as equally relaxed about casual brief moments of exposing herbtits to others if the topless sunbathing is no more.

[PeterHuds]

My wife too is now less inclined to go topless on the beach because of the phone camera risk. However, now rather than having them on show all day her thing now is to give brief ‘innocent’ and ‘accidental’ glimpses of her tits, e.g changing from bikini top to t shirt, swapping wet bikini top for a dry one etc. it’s actually still a big thrill, bigger in many ways because she appears to be reluctant to let people see them and other guys get to see forbidden goods. This of course also plays into her plausible deniability cover. We were on holiday in menorca with her friends family this summer and she would ‘quickly’ change her top and expose her tits to her friends husband and son. It puts the onus on them to not look or turn away. But of course that didn’t happen and hopefully there was plenty of beating off after days at the beach after they both thought they had ‘got lucky’ seeing my wife’s tanlined 32Cs!

[Erii]

I've just done an interesting (to me anyway) little exercise. I've gone through my wife's old photo albums and photos I have and searched for just standard beach shots from Spain, mainly ibiza. The photos had to be of a busy beach in the middle of the day (there really are s lot of photos of sinsets!) That search wasn't that productive so I they trawled flikr for people's holiday snaps from ibiza and whatever busy mainland resorts I could think to search for. All the photos however had to be taken between 1998 and 2003.

I then counted up how many women in the background there were, and how many if them were topless. Then I added up the numbers.

I made sure I didn't include any obviously staged topless shots of people's girlfriends or wives, and i tried to not include any obvious voyeur shots. Just what looked like genuine holiday snaps with women accidentally being snapped topless in the background.

Across all the photos I found that 46% of the women across all the beaches were topless. And that just included the ones topless at the moment the photo was taken. I also included women up walking around, or perhaps just arriving or leaving, of which many more were covered up. How many of these got their norks out when they lay down?.

I need a time machine to go back then! Most women 20 years ago were happy it seems to show off their tits on a Spanish beach. I'm just glad some of these moments have be preserved for posterity.