Jenice Armstrong: Taking off the top at Asbury Park?

WE LEARNED last week that Asbury Park, N.J., is considering designating a portion of its beach for topless sunbathing.

Men have been doing it for years, and fair is fair. But my question to women is, would you go topless at Asbury Park if you could? It seems to me that for a woman to exercise her right to bare boobs is only asking for trouble. Can you imagine the neck-craning and hoopla it would cause if female sunbathers suddenly started exposing their breasts? Asbury Park's not ready for that.

Don't think I'm trying to justify legally requiring women to keep their tops on while men (some with mammaries larger than some women's) are free to go topless.

That's wrong. But Asbury Park is on the Jersey shore - not in Saint-Tropez - and Snooki and her gang aren't ready for that much exposed flesh.

Women going topless on the beach shouldn't be a big deal in 2010, but in most places in the United States it still is. We're still prudish when it comes to breasts. They can be double FFs and pumped full of silicone, but a woman had better not let her nipples or areola see daylight on most public beaches.

That kind of thing gets members of both sexes all worked up - and might get the topless woman arrested. With all the rampant sexuality we're surrounded by, you'd think we'd be at the point at which we no longer view breasts as sex objects and something that needs to be hidden, especially from small children. We will get there one day, but for now, we're still a long way from thinking of breasts the way we do a knee or an elbow.

That's why an effort by Reggie Flimlin, an Asbury yoga-studio owner to get local authorities to allow topless sunbathing might be forward- thinking but is impractical. However, at Flimlin's request, government leaders are thinking of turning about a block-long section of beach at 8th Avenue into a topless beach.

But topless sunbathing is going to unnerve a whole lot of folks.

And any woman daring enough to let it all hang out risks not only gawkers and oglers but amateur paparazzi to use their cell phones to take unauthorized photos and videos. If someone really wants to be an Internet pinup girl, the way to do it is to pose for photos - not have them taken on the sly by a hormone-driven teen beachcomber with a smart phone.

Experts say the intense attention a topless beach would attract would only be temporary. I'm not sure I believe that because every day new visitors would show up and need to be desensitized to all the - ahem - female exposure all over again.

"Men are going to have to get used to it," said Nadine Gary, executive director of GoTopless.org, which plans to protest in New York City in August to advocate for women's right to go shirtless. "How much can you stare at breasts?"

Interestingly, while Asbury Park has this debate, topless sunbathing shows some signs of falling off elsewhere on the planet.

In France, where the practice has been commonplace, more women reportedly are covering up, citing concerns about skin cancer and unwanted attention. There was talk a few years back about banning semi-nude sunbathing in Australia, but it didn't get far. Meanwhile, momentum for topless swimsuits is picking up in the United States, particularly in Las Vegas, where a number of adults-only pools attract huge crowds by allowing women to expose their breasts.

That's all well and good for Sin City. But in Asbury Park, going topless might go over a bit differently.

Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog: http://go.philly.com/heyjen.