Can Americans be Aclimated to Topless Beaches?
Question:
Now I want people to think about this one. I've seen numerous people make statements about topless girls being ogled or maybe even raped for going topless on a public beach and want to submit some hard facts to make you think. In Moscow Idaho a bunch of girls needed money for rent one summer and by accident started a topless car wash. It went on for several months and it wasn't morality that shot it down but money. The local car washes couldn't stand the competition. In any event these girls washed cars topless all summer and none of them got raped and no cameras were allowed in the area. The male stage hands at the Jubilee show in Las Vegas see 200 attractive topless girls walk on and off stage every night and I guarantee there is no ogling, staring or drooling. After a couple of nights any new guy is so used to it he doesn't care. Now if those situations can happen without rape, ogling or drooling on the girls then why would it be so difficult for people to be acclimated to topless beaches. I mean how did Miami Beach ever get to be a topless beach?
And the girls in Moscow were attractive enough that in the months they ran the car wash they made enough money for rent and the next years tuition at the University of Idaho
Answer:
Sure, Americans would get used to it. We got used to women bearing their arms and men going shirtless at the beach, neither of which were considered proper 100 years ago. Guys will always look at attractive women, and those that can't control themselves may ogle or drool, but toplessness has little to do with that. Those guys would have the same reaction to a girl in a bikini.
And I don't think rape has anything to do with it. If a criminal wants to rape an woman, attractive or not, he'll do it with or without a topless beach, normal beach, or any other specific environment.
The reality is that women going topless is actually perfectly legal in much of the US, such as Texas and New York. The reason they don't go topless is because they choose not to. A lot of cultural norms are dictated by custom and individual choice to adhere to that custom, not law.
I actually think topless sunbathing would have started catching on in the US in the last 1980s or 1990s years in response to the trend in Western Europe from the 60s and 70s if the US population hadn't started getting so obese. Topless sunbathing favors small or average bodies with small or average breasts--larger breasts look and feel better in a top because of bounce and droop, and larger bodies look better in a full coverage one piece. In the last 25 years, the average US bra size has increased from a 34B to a 36C-D. It's the young women from 18-30 with A or B cups who would start a trend of going topless, and there are fewer of them now. In mainland Europe where topless sunbathing is still common, average sizes are smaller. (In contrast, in the UK where topless sunbathing is not common, they have an even larger average bra size than the US.)
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