My chest is mine!

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“Did you go topless?” The other girls in the 2nd grade cloakroom glared at me. It was the early 1980s, I had just come back from summer vacation in the south of France. You would stand out on the beach there if you wore a top. At home it was the opposite, I was almost the only person without a white bikini mark while I was changing before gymnastics.

The topless wave didn’t seem like much of a hit at the Zurich Seegemeinde back then – at least among us young people. The changes in the growing body, and especially the breasts, were confusing enough: exciting and beautiful, but also uncomfortable and embarrassing. It was all about the greater liberation of the female body from dresses, corsets, swimsuits and finally the bikini top.

Sexual Liberation

Women have been fighting for a long time for the sun to finally shine on female breasts. Some demonstrated in the streets and burned their bras for sexual freedom and self-determination over their own bodies. Others were liberated on the beach in their own way. Just like the French sex symbol Brigitte Bardot (88). Taking topless photos in the 1960s made her a man’s dream and sparked the topless trend among women.

It’s an ambivalent role that many women are familiar with today: Do I take off my clothes because I feel freer now, or am I mainly subjecting myself to being looked at? Both the obscene man and the critical woman – at least that’s the stereotype. The truth is: nude breasts are not a common image in our society and attract attention. Already more. Contrary to the 1980s, when the baths open for the season, you can hardly see any bare breasts. And if so, then in a separate women’s compartment, and more likely in the older generation.

Why do women still choose to be low profile at the top? Is it because the emancipated movement, originally about physical emancipation, became a current without a political explosion? Was it naive to believe that she could completely get rid of the provocative symbolism of female breasts?

The truth is: in 1978, when the first women were officially allowed to take off their tops at the Marzilibad in Bern, so did the voyeurs who showed up and took pictures with large lenses. Nowadays, a small cell phone is all it takes, and social media gives such images a whole new level of power: everyone is a public person, so to speak, and no one wants to show their bare skin on their digital business card – at least not without it. to be able to decide for themselves.

Chest and woman movement

The problems in the women’s movement have also changed. According to the French philosopher Camille Froidevaux-Metterie (55), the main theme of the 1970s was physicality. “I call it the reproductive struggle. “It’s about sex and motherhood, free and free contraception,” says the author and representative of “embodied feminism” in an interview on Arte TV. In the 1980s, the fight moved to another front, it was about business. “Women can’t get pregnant and when. As they were able to decide whether to stay or not, new professional perspectives were opened up, it was about wages and career.”

It was a time when the female body was to some extent rejected and more adapted to the male – for example, with broad shoulder pads to bridge differences. Although women have political, social and sexual rights, societal norms continue to determine their bodies. It was not until the 2000s that “liberated” breasts re-entered the political arena. The Ukrainian women’s movement Femen media effectively staged topless demonstrations, taboos such as menstruation or female lust were openly discussed, and in 2017 the MeToo wave finally brought the movement to patriarchal structures.

Are all breasts the same?

Now that the breast has reached the gender debate, the demand: equality for all nipples. GLP politician Sandra Bienek (44) filed a related request with the Zurich City Council in April, along with three other signatories. “It’s about whether women should be allowed to swim topless in indoor pools in Zurich. And if not, why not.” It is not the first political move in this direction. In Berlin, the new bathroom regulation has already taken effect: women are as obvious as men when they are only allowed to enter the water in their bathing suits. However, there is also a struggle for women’s right to veil – for religious reasons, such as the hashem.

Miri Wolff (22) knows from personal experience that bare nipples have caused a stir among the public to this day. Not even topless. “After swimming, it was enough to change my clothes on the lake promenade and show my breasts for what seemed like a minute.” An elderly lady complained to him, especially because the landscape was bothering his grandson next to him. “But the first thing we see as babies and feeds us is the nipple. What’s wrong with that?”

By self-determination bus

Miri Wolff is a breast activist, belonging to a new generation of young women who do not want to deny their bodies, that is, who want to cover their bodies without being reduced to a sexual object. Even as a teenager, Miri Wolff took to the streets in feminist demonstrations and also campaigned for the “Unleash the Nipple” movement on social media. She attacks she in tight, white T-shirts that allow almost anything to be seen. This is why she is often attacked by men: “And because they fail, I am attacked and criticized.”

He doesn’t let that deter him. «This is hypocrisy, two clicks on the mobile phone and millions of porn memes appear. It’s about us women taking over our breasts.” It also takes the pressure off of being perfect. She celebrates her feminine curves: “For me, it’s empowering,” she says. She doesn’t wear a bra when she’s a freelance hairdresser and make-up artist. It didn’t stop her from being successful, on the contrary: she was nominated for ProSieben’s “Dress Up” show last year and won.

place of women’s privacy

But by no means all women have such a self-confident relationship with their bodies or want to politicize their breasts. “For most women, this is a very special, intimate place and an essential part of their female identity,” says psychologist Ada Borkenhagen. Also erotic: A nipple can be as exciting as a clitoris. Professor of psychosomatic medicine at the University of Magdeburg sees demands for “nipple freedom for all” as part of the trend to equalize all gender differences. This makes neither medical nor social significance: “There are biological differences and the female breast is still a different sexual sign from the male. You can’t change that with a new regulation.”

Also, the idea that bare female upper bodies should generally be allowed in washrooms does not fully satisfy women’s approval. According to a representative survey from Germany, only 28 percent of respondents would welcome such a new rule. Not surprisingly, men view it more positively, 46 percent. “You don’t have to expose an intimate space,” Borkenhagen says. And such an arrangement can also trigger repression. In addition, women are more critical of their bodies: two-thirds are dissatisfied with their breasts. This was demonstrated by a survey of 18,500 women in 40 countries. Nearly half want larger breasts, 23 percent smaller.

The more exposed, the higher the pressure

Borkenhagen was convinced: “The more the body is exposed and you can no longer shape it with clothes or bras, the greater the pressure to meet a certain ideal of beauty.” “Am I Pretty Enough?” is currently out in the fall. He is writing a book called His observation: “When topless became the fashion in the 1960s, breast aesthetic surgeries started in the same period. The most common are still expansions.

Of course, it’s also about the way men look at their breasts. But what is so fascinating about these two curves? The truth is that only human women carry a full breast in front of them all their lives. In all other mammals, such as female monkeys, breasts enlarge only with milk production. Evolutionary biology has sought various explanations for this, one of the most popular being that we humans walk upright. This shifted male sexual attraction from butt to breast, especially since we are one of the few mammals that mate face-to-face. The thesis of the American evolutionary researcher Desmond Morris (95) in the 1960s is now considered sexist and culturally based.

Eroticism in the Renaissance

Because the erotic appeal of the female breast is far from natural. This has been proven when looking at indigenous peoples from Asia to Africa where the breasts were not covered. In European culture, the breast became an objectified male desire only from the Renaissance. This can be seen in art, the beginning of nude painting with Greek goddesses and representations from mythology. Previously, there had to be a religious reason for nudity, i.e. for Adam and Eve or for the nursing Mary. However, even the Church Fathers doubted whether it was venerated solely as an iconic symbol of life and fertility: they feared that depictions of “Maria lactans” might distract the faithful from prayer.

So the balance between Madonna and prostitute is very old. On the one hand, there is the strong eroticization of the breast, and on the other, the idealization of motherhood. And then the lap is also used politically – a multitasking task. No wonder many women prefer to protect and cover their breasts from this. Or let them have open breasts among themselves.

Source : Blick