It's not just Kate, NO woman should go topless!

There has been a terrific storm in a B-cup over the past week and so much, um, breast-beating over photographs published abroad and on the internet of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless on holiday in France.
I don’t agree with the feminist commentator who wrote earlier this week that topless photos of the future queen are really no different to those of page three models or the likes of Kate Moss caught unawares diving from a yacht.
It is the choice of these women to take off their clothes for pictures that will be scrutinised in public.
Kate Moss has displayed her nipples for money so often that she can hardly mind when snapped off-duty.

As nature intended: The Duchess of Cambridge being greeted by topless women in the Solomon Islands

The Duchess does deserve privacy, especially on holiday, but there is an entirely different reason why I am not on her side in this case and feel she has, finally, slipped up and brought the scandal upon herself.
The reason is that women shouldn’t go topless in the first place, anywhere, ever! There, I’ve said it. The flawless, impeccable, always smiling Kate has shown she is human. Thank the Lord.

I have never understood the need for women to sunbathe topless. First of all, it is bad for your health, and will prematurely age you.
Second, if you want to avoid a tan line, you can get a perfectly realistic colour in a spray booth for a tenner, and no carcinomas or prying lenses in sight.
And third, why would you want a stranger to see an intimate part of your anatomy?
I have never gone topless. OK, I lie. I did it just once, when I was 22, in Portugal, on the roof of my private villa.

Why sunbathe topless? It's bad for your health, and will prematurely age you, says Liz Jones (posed by model)

But I lasted only ten minutes and was prone the whole time. No one else was about, and I got so nervous when a plane flew overhead I immediately covered up.
Why would Kate go topless in a villa that surely has the odd gardener, maid or security guard wandering about, pretending to look skyward? Why go topless when, given your fame and status, there is the teeniest, tiniest possibility you just might be photographed?
The Kate photographs have been compared with those naked ones of Harry, but really, there is no comparison. 
He is single, and his whole demeanour, his raison d’etre, is to be a little bit wild. He has a stressful job that means he has to be able to let off steam occasionally.

But Kate signed up to being our future queen and it goes without saying that along with having to smile non-stop and never get lipstick on her teeth, a degree of modesty anywhere outside her own master suite with the drapes drawn is strictly non-negotiable.

There is something blatantly exhibitionist, but also smug and superior, about women who flaunt their breasts on the beach.
I even find women who breastfeed in public, without using a scarf draped artfully over the whole process, a little too graphic. 
The defence is always that it is natural, but so is burping and sneezing. (I also think men should be kept out of the delivery room: mystery in a woman is a very under-rated quality indeed.)
Yes, of course, it is in the public domain that I am weird and even a little phobic, to put it mildly, about breasts.
I come from the insane world of fashion where womanly breasts — as opposed to the fried egg, boyish protuberances we are glimpsing a lot of with this season’s liberal use of sheer fabrics — are as shocking to behold on the catwalk as a varicose vein. And don’t get me started on post-partum breasts that encompass both horrors in one fell swoop.
I had big breasts, once, and had them cut off when I was 29, so revolted was I when I had to soap them in the shower and when I was smacked in the jaw by their bouncing when out jogging.
I used to bandage them under my clothes when I was at work, so I could walk around without men ogling them. 

No comparison: Kate Moss is often flashing her nipples while the Duchess dresses demurely

Not even a low-flying seagull has seen my breasts since, given the awful scarring, elongated nipples and puckering.