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It was last Thursday that the facts occurred on a beach in Sainte-Marie-la-mer. Two gendarmes allegedly asked women who were tanning topless to put on their clothes.
Is it still possible to sunbathe topless on the beach? The intervention of gendarmes on the beach of Sainte-Marie-la-mer, near Perpignan, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, reopens the debate. Last Thursday, the gendarmes intervened while several women were sunbathing topless by the sea. The intervention was confirmed by the town hall of Sainte-Marie-la-mer. At the origin of this complaint would be a family whose children would have been embarrassed by seeing the women in question topless.
Several witnesses confided in France 3 Occitanie: "I was so shocked at what was going on, it was my feminist soul that spoke. I asked them if for them, topless tanning was an indecency? They asked me to move around and left the beach. "
This story puts the wearing of the monokini on the beach back to the heart of the debate. In France, some municipalities prohibit the topless on the beach. But the town hall of Sainte-Marie-la-mer does not expose any legislation prohibiting being topless on the beach. The women who were asked to get dressed would therefore have been entitled to refuse the request of the two gendarmes.
Recently, an IFOP survey of 1,004 people appeared revealing the evolution of female body exposure at the beach: "The question of the" (de) veiling "of bodies on beaches in summer has always aroused intense controversy as it is symptomatic of changes in the standards of modesty imposed on women and in particular of their ability to overcome injunctions. clothing of a moral or religious nature ", can we read on the study. 22% of French women practice #topless, a drop of 12 points in 10 years. Moreover, among women aged between 18 and 49, the practice of topless has fallen from 43% in 1984 to 19% today.