Woman's Hour - 03/08/2009

With Sheila McClennon. In the 80s, removing your bikini top to sunbathe was seen by some as part of the feminist third wave. The right to bare breasts on the beach was claimed by women in their thousands and for many, to do anything else would have been unthinkable. Now, it's reported, the tide has turned. Women on the Riviera are back in their tops. But why? Sheila McClennon talks to Vicki Hambley, the director of the 'topfree' play 'The Strong Breast Revolution' (which is appearing at the Edinburgh fringe) and to Dr Ruth Barcan, who has written a history of nudity. They discuss why going topfree can be an act of protest, not just a way to get rid of tan lines. Charlotte Bronte is perhaps best remembered for writing Jane Eyre. Yet it is her darker psychological novel Villette that probably reveals the most about the author herself. Like Charlotte herself, its narrator - Lucy Snowe - moves to Brussels as a governess, where she falls in love with a man she knows she can never have. While some criticise Villette for its unlikely heroine and ambiguous ending, others see it as a masterpiece. Sheila takes a closer look at Villette with Jude Morgan, the author of The Taste of Sorrow, and writer and historian Lucasta Miller. News about Europe's first 'home prison', which houses a growing number of female convicts and their babies. And male circumcision - are there health benefits for women when her partner has been circumcised? Should all boys be circumcised? Sheila discusses the facts and myths of male circumcision with Kennedy Gondwe, a 29-year-old reporter from Zambia who was circumcised two years ago, and recorded the event.