sunburnt nipples*

What is it about female nipples that make them “obscene”? Objectively speaking how can anyone have a problem with nipples? I mean we all exist because of them and yet women are not allowed to bare them in public in this country.
While traveling through Corsica one summer with my boyfriend I decided to go topless on the beach. I was never a shy person, growing up I always ran around nude… of course, until my boobs started to sprout.
At 20 I was not much different. I always enjoyed skinny-dipping in the local lake, or at pool parties. But, it was different the first time I unhooked my top in public on a crowded beach on the Mediterranean.
I remember thinking, as I stood there alone “what’s the big deal? Guys get to and in America I can’t, so I better take advantage.”
So, I did. It snapped my top open and I threw it over my neck. There I stood half-naked on the beach. Part of me expected some sort of commotion, because I had been raised in the States. Of course nothing happened and I parked my contented self in a nice little spot on the warm sand.
My boyfriend arrived shocked and declared “Ah oaui, t’es bonne comme ca!” in his Parisian vernacular. It was kind of laughable. I mean I must have been the only woman on the beach with white boobs…
It felt so nice to be free and open and not worry about people thinking it was some kind of sexual thing. The water feels better, the sun feels better, the wind, the sand, everything. That day we sipped on wine and discussed a whole array of topics from American attitudes toward nudity, toward sex, toward violence.

I felt sort of proud and evolved. I soaked it all up as I lay there topless on my back. The sand was relaxing and the sound of waves entrancing.
Twenty minutes later I sat up and realized I had burned my nipples since they had never been exposed to sun for prolonged periods… AIE!
Or how we say in America, OUCH!

*this is a repost from my old blog