My first experiences at beaches and parks and things in Germany were revelatory. Nobody cared about the “girls!”

If a woman wanted to sunbathe, she just took her top off and sunbathed, and the earth kept rotating on its axis.

I will never forget the time in Provincetown when I had to caution a German tourist not to change out of her bikini top in public, that she might be arrested for it. She looked at me like I was insane, which I suppose our culture is.

I should probably add that as a gay man pretty far along on the Kinsey scale, I’ve never gotten the whole fascination anyway. To me, a breast is just another bit of female anatomy neither particularly pleasing nor displeasing.

I used to scratch my head in high school trying to figure out what my male friends were so excited about when they acquired nudist magazines. But that’s a gay man for you.

I’m not sure how the taboo got started, but I do think it’s quite unfair. If somebody forced me to wear something around my chest at all times, I’d be pissed.