M y first time was on a remote beach in Thailand . After some gentle encouragement from my best friend, who repeatedly assured me how much better I’d feel afterwards, we both decided the moment had come. It would mark a major transition in my life, from girl to adult.
I was 18; it was vital . Necessary. Monumental.
I looked around at the nearby strangers and felt my insides fizzing with nerves. Taking a deep breath and closing my eyes, I whispered, “I’m ready.” And then I did it: I took off my bikini top.
Topless sunbathing for women is, in many ways, one of our last taboos . For whatever reason, we remain incredibly prudish about it in the UK, where our fear of breasts is apparently so visceral that whenever a famous woman dares to ditch the bikini top on holiday, it warrants headline news – and the latest is Heidi Klum on a beach in St Barts. It happens a lot at this time of year: one quick scan of the celebrity gossip rags and I can see three women being spotlighted for having this exact audacity.
The most notable example of this was in 2012, when photographs of the Princess of Wales sunbathing topless were published in French magazine, Closer . The photos were taken of Kate and the Prince of Wales while on a private holiday at a villa in France, and the violation led to the couple winning damages over the magazine’s publication of the photo. Besides the fact that this was an outright invasion of privacy, and no one was ever supposed to see those images in the .