To not understand why my mum ( or anyone ) needs to sunbathe topless ?

[aghak]

I'm staying with mum and my two kids at a holiday cottage. It's private so no one can see, but I still don't get why she or anyone feels the need to sunbathe topless ? I would just never do it and it makes me a bit uncomfortable to be around people who sunbathe topless.

I get it I get it, not everyone is like me.

But why do your boobs need to be brown ?

She also insists on wearing a bikini at almost 70. Ok fine, I don't wear a bikini and I'm not even 40 yet. I do think, good for you but I do think one pieces are just more classy. Same with having everything on display.

I realise I sound mean spirited don't I ? Or just uptight ? But isn't more, less and more classy in general ? Interested in opinions !

She raised me so I'm surprised I am not more on display myself but I'm pretty private about my body and always have been.

Well she might rather fancy sunbathing completely in the nude and isn't, in due deference to the rest of you, so I'd be glad she was just topless if I were you.

Sunbathing topless is not nearly as common as it once was. We nearly always go on a European beach holiday and almost no one is topless - in Spain, France, Portugal, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Greece, Canary Islands - all in recent experience.

When I holidayed with friends in the 80s and 90s, most women were topless.

She's showing off her old fashioned credentials, I suppose. I've never been able to understand the appeal at all.

Do you have the same issue with men sunbathing topless?

I realise I sound mean spirited don't I ? Or just uptight ? But isn't more, less and more classy in general ?

Yes, yes, it's up to her.

I'm in my early 40s, overweight and will topless sunbathe in a (bikini) thong, whether I'm in my garden, on the beach, or at a holiday resort. If people don't like it they don't have to look, it's really quite simple! Even if you wear a top and take the straps down you don't always get a tan that doesn't look odd in certain styles of clothes so it's easier to take it off.
Good for your mum I say!

I’m somewhat surprised how we are all so much more hung up about our bodies on the beach than we were 30 years ago. I just love to get out of my clothes and lie in the sun. It was quite Ok to lie naked at the far end of the beaches in Corsica in 1984. It is only in the last 10 years or so there has been far less toplessness on European beaches. No one turned an eye at this then, and none of the current endemic ageism that tries to question what I can wear. People in general seem far more prudish than they were in the 70’s/80s/90s.

I would argue that she is not in private. You are there and your children. Manners would dictate that you don’t display boobs if this makes any others uncomfortable. Of course many parents don’t care about this and still think they make the rules when it comes to their adult children.

Manners also say not to look and stare at people.

If she's just casually topless, not in a weirdly sexual and attention seeking way (& nothing you've said suggests she is), then I would suggest that your hang ups over perfectly normal human bodies are likely, in the social media, body dysmorphia and "pressure to look perfect" days we live in, to be potentially more damaging to your children than their grandma's lack of clothes in a place where that's broadly appropriate. You shouldn't feel shame about your body, nor have a problem with anyone else's, if they're not being inappropriate with it.

I can understand that you may feel slightly icky about it, but on a wider level, being comfortable in your skin and understanding that bodies come in lots of shapes and sizes and it's fine not to be in some unattainable beauty standard, is actually a really valuable thing for kids to take with them as they grow.

I sincerely hope by 70 I'm confident enough with my body to rock a bikini and tan my boobs. If men can walk around with their giant pot bellies and man-tatas out why shouldn't I?

I also hope that by 40 I'm not a judgemental cow who bitches about other women's clothes and bodies and thinks women should be making an effort to be "classy"

I am here in UK sunbathing topless in my garden, kids at school,husband sat at the side of me ..its joyous!

This.

Topless sunbathing was normal across France, loads of holiday places.

In Greece and the Canaries any beach used by Germans was just naturally naturist. Many beaches on the W coast of France where people just chose to go naked if they preferred.

Same on Holkham beach in Norfolk. Which is sadly colonised by gay men on the make now, partly because the parking that enabled families to walk down through the fields and dunes had been stopped.

But our whole family used to have lovely days there, and anyone who chose not to wear clothes didn’t. Teens, kids, grandparents… bodies are bodies and nothing to do with sex or aesthetic judgement.

Personally I find skimpy bikinis / things etc as sexualising of bodies as they are ‘covering up bits for modesty’. Hence the perceived contradiction between this and the ‘thing’ thread.

The only time I was aware of being leched at on a French ‘clothing optional’ beach was when I walked along wearing only a pair of v brief cut off Levi’s rather than nothing.

I agree. My mum
used to do it and the local kids would tease me about it , I found it mortifying. She always had her dressing gown flapping open as well. It felt performative /forced on me than just being an I’m not bothered about nudity thing.

Ha ha nope that’s the only way to do it or you can’t get the thing back on properly

There doesn’t seem to be an epidemic of it amongst men…

I don’t like sunbathing topless, my body and my choice, Same applies to you and your DM OP

Bikini = fabulous
Boobs on display in front of your family = less so

And I'm French, we are pretty relaxed on the nudity at the beach front!

But I'm with you, I don't want to see my mum's boobs on holiday. Or ever, actually :D

Do people still sunbathe?

No. Absolutely none. You check any beach on a hot day - utterly deserted.

Whoa. Let her do what she wants, and why not wear a bikini at any age? If she's in her 70s then she was a teen in the swinging 60s when going topless was the thing (look at all those pics of Woodstock).

It’s only a pair of tits.
I hope I live to be 70 and have mine out on the beach.

Have you ever been to Europe OP?? You are in for a shock, everyone wears bikinis. Quite a few take their tops off while lying down. Lots of children seeing boobs. No one cares. No-one is walking around the streets with their tits out.

You need to relax. You do you. At 40 years old I think you are way too young to wear a swimsuit, but again, you do you, live and let live.

Hilarious. I wonder why every European beach is rammed to the gunnels.

There’s nothing classy about being so judgemental.

Well I can't see the attraction of sunbathing with or without a top. It's obviously also not great for skin cancer risk so in that sense YANBU.

However I would also recognise that we all all different and sunbathing does no harm to anyone elso in that sense YABU.

YABU with your distaste at her wearing a bikini at nearly 70. As PPs have said, that is agist.

They don't need to but if they want to why should it matter?