There are shops and restaurants across from the boardwalk that you can patronize in just your swimsuit (we did). Hampton Beach is wide, the sand is fine, and the water is warm (for New England). But we love the beach and want to be as comfortable as possible while adhering to legal constraints. We spend most of our leisure time nude by the pool in our back yard, sunbathing and enjoying the pleasure of each other’s company. A big surprise was the enthusiastic approval that my husband received from a group of teenage boys! On the contrary, each of us received lots of compliments – spoken and unspoken – mostly from members of the opposite sex. My husband and I stand out because we don’t follow the cultural norms, but no one ever says a negative word to us on Hampton Beach.

The disparity in coverage between the girls’ and guys’ suits is greater than it’s ever been. Not only that, the trend towards shorter trunks that seemed to be underway in the recent past has apparently stalled.

Other than my husband in his g-string and an older man in a thong, all the guys were wearing board shorts. The guys, on the other hand, are still in the thralls of body insecurity. The highest concentration is between the southern end of the boardwalk and the beach patrol headquarters building that juts out mid-way along the boardwalk. Going topless hasn’t caught on yet, but the cheeky bottoms keep getting smaller each year. They were the only topless women we saw all day. But on one of our walks, we did see two twenty-something women sunbathing topless. Sometimes when other women see that the beach patrol passes by me without stopping, they remove their tops. I was also topless, which is legal on Hampton Beach. I myself wore a g-string, which of course has only one piece of cloth – in my case, a very tiny piece. Many of the suits have tie sides, so they have only two triangular pieces of cloth on the bottom. All the girls and women from ages fourteen to forty wear cheeky bikinis, and the percentage of those swimsuits that are true thongs is higher than anywhere around. It’s the hotspot for thong bikinis in New England. My husband and I spent a wonderful day at Hampton Beach recently.

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