In July 2017, I wrote an article about toplessness for Vogue Italia. Director, actress, and political activist Lina Esco came from show business to question US indecent exposure laws with her 2014 film Free the Nipple. Her film took on a life of its own, eventually evolving into a political movement, supported by Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne, and Willow Smith. On social media, the hashtag #FreeTheNipple spread with lightning speed. The same year, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted “Me too,” encouraging other survivors of sexual assault to do the same, building on a movement launched by activist Tarana Burke more than a decade earlier. The rest is history.
For that Vogue article, I spoke with designer Alessandro Michele about our shared memories of the topless beaches we loved in our youth. Wherever water was in sight in Italy—the party-filled Riviera Romagnola, the traditionally chic Amalfi and Sorrento coasts, the rugged cliffs and coves of Italy's extension of France's Côte d'Azur, the towering volcanic rocks of Sicily's mythical Riviera dei Ciclopi—people of all body shapes and forms were, naturally, always topless.
Growing up in Italy in the '90s, bare breasts were everywhere and no one thought anything of it. “When I look at photos from my childhood, I see the imperfections of breasts and bodies, each with its own story. When I think of the 'non-beauty' of that era, I actually feel it's the ultimate beauty,” Michele told me.
In fact, I used to feel the same way. My relationship with toplessness was part of a very democratic cultural status quo. If all women on a Mediterranean beach, from sexy girls tanning on the shore to grandmas eating spaghetti al pomodoro from Tupperware containers under parasols, have the same naked body parts, then somehow we are all on the same team. No hierarchy was established. In general, there was very little censorship of bare breasts. Nipples were freely featured on the covers of magazines on the newsstands, whether they were tabloids or art and fashion magazines. Because breasts were part of the national conversation and aesthetic, porn stars Ilona Stoller (aka Cicciolina) and Moana Pozzi co-founded a political party called Love Party. I distinctly remember a neighbor hanging a party banner from his window with a topless Cicciolina winking at him.
