The rule that women must cover their chests is newer than many assume
Across much of the world, bare upper bodies for both sexes were ordinary until missionaries, conquests or Victorian manners arrived. In Korea, the women's jacket called the jeogori shrank over three centuries from about 65 centimetres to 28. The Western habit of hiding the female nipple dates largely from the 19th century.
Norms vary enormously by place. Many Indigenous societies treat an uncovered chest as unremarkable, and at some beaches in Europe and Australia women sunbathe topless by law or custom. Elsewhere, modesty norms require covering, and many jurisdictions treat female toplessness as indecent exposure. Campaigners for equal treatment prefer the word topfree, which avoids the sexual overtones of topless. For men the equivalent state, barechestedness, is widely accepted at beaches or during hot outdoor work, though a no shirt, no service sign can still bar the door.
Historically, traditional societies in North America, Africa, Australia and the Pacific treated a bare upper body as normal for both sexes until Christian missionaries arrived, and in parts of Asia before the Muslim expansions of the 13th and 14th centuries. Middle Minoan women between 2000 and 1600 BCE wore fitted bodices cut open at the front. Among the Himba of Namibia and the Hamar of Ethiopia the custom continues. Several communities in South India and Sri Lanka kept it until the 19th or early 20th century, and in traditional Japan partial nudity was broadly accepted, except among the samurai elite.
Korea offers a measurable example. The jeogori was long enough to cover the waist in the 16th century, then shortened steadily until some 19th-century versions measured only 14.5 cm, with a separate band worn over the breasts. Courtesans known as gisaeng started the fashion and upper-class women followed. In Laos in 1858, the French explorer Henri Mouhot photographed married women uncovered, since breastfeeding was not seen as sexual.
Modern rules remain patchy. In the United States, a public indecency ordinance from Erie, Pennsylvania, which defined nudity partly as an uncovered female nipple while ignoring men's, was the subject of a Supreme Court case. Instagram bans most images of female nipples but permits breastfeeding, mastectomy scars and art; removing posts by Rihanna in 2014 helped spark the Free the Nipple campaign.
Source: Toplessness
