Sun's out. Roses are out. And, in true British summer tradition, breasts are out, too, not to mention legs, midriffs, cleavages, the whole fleshy, flashy shebang.
The curious thing is that this Great Undressing doesn't actually require any sunshine at all. As Liz Hurley noted the other day: 'More and more people, even in the depths of winter, seem to wear an awful lot of summer clothes. For the past couple of years,' she added conspiratorially, 'I've worn open-toed sandals throughout the year. I think once you've got to the stage where you're not really hanging out for the bus any more but getting into a car, you can. Of course [some people] are taking public transport, in which case they can't.'
Oh, but we do Liz, we do. On the number 27, it's all breasts ahoy and navel manoeuvres. Walk along any high street and you'll see women in all manner of tiddly clothes, the kind that could easily fall off if they sneezed. You might think that the boho look, with its flowing skirts and peasant shirts and hundredweight of ethnic beads, is this summer's hot fashion news. Think again. This season, as in every season for the past five years, come rain, shine or mild drizzle, your must-have accessory is a well-toned, buffed superbod.
The idle observer might conclude that this neo-nakedness is designed to ensnare a mate as he blunders past in his shorts and sandals. But no. This parade is designed for women. There will be females out there who may sniff at the triviality... but I bet you look too. Come on, admit it. Hands up anyone who watched Celebrity Love Island and wasn't pleased to see that Abi Titmuss had huggable hips, a nice, round belly and a chest which looked like two carrier bags full of orange juice?
There are rules, though, in this great national game of Strip. Hurley, now 40 and an expert in the art of flesh management, issued several guidelines last week, counselling us all to avoid 'anything that is too small or too tight, unless you're slim and toned... I'm sick of seeing flab bulging out all over. Bare legs in a miniskirt,' she added, 'can look dodgy at any age.' True enough, which explains why Hurley's legs rarely leave the comfort zone of those white jeans.
Charlotte Church, who only a monent looked like your kid niece, has further grown-up advice concerning this perilously thin line between clever exposure and naked embarrassment: 'You've got to have one thing on show at one time,' she says, wise beyond her years. 'You either do cleavage or a midriff thing or a back thing or a leg thing.' Do all the 'things' together and you'll look like a cat's breakfast. Step forward, Jodie Marsh. Or any one of those soap stars out on the razz.
Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman recognises the pitfalls of flashing too much flesh. 'Choose your bit,' she agrees. 'Very few people can show everything all at once. I've never thought, for instance, that cleavage and legs make a good combo. But do back and legs together, by all means. The key is to be confident in it and why you're doing it. If you're not comfortable, you won't look good, full stop.'
The 'one bit at a time' rule has served celebrities well for years. Kate Moss, for instance, is all leg. Renée Zellweger is forever revealing her shoulders. Charlize Theron gives good back. Mind you, even old hands fall foul of the rules occasionally. When Hurley dined with Donatella Versace and Arun Nayar at Milan's in-vogue restaurant Dar El Yacout recently, she wore a dress with an astonishing cutaway hole exposing the underside of her breasts, which made it look as though she'd attached a toddler's bottom to her front by way of amusing decoration.
The problem is that fashion has been encouraging us to get increasingly naked for years. Ever since Eva Herzigova pitched her breasts at us from the Wonderbra billboards of 1994, the clothes-to-flesh ratio in everyday fashion has been tilting in favour of exposure. Close behind the Wonderbra, as you will recall, came those low-rise trousers which gave airtime to a hitherto uncharted segment of flesh. It wasn't long before the midriff joined the party. Beyoncé, JLo, Girls Aloud. The female belly marched forth - flat, ballooned with child or somewhere comfortably soft in between - and took up its position in the pantheon of body bits which were now worth revealing to all in the queue at the supermarket.
'There were,' says Shulman, 'whole areas that were once under wraps which are now regularly displayed. The revealing of the hips, which happened some time ago, has morphed into a general feeling of security with exposure. It's no bad thing that women feel such confidence in their bodies, but we do need to be aware of the messages we're giving out. I told a young girl just recently that she really oughtn't to walk around with quite so much flesh on display. She had no recognition that it might be provocative. Perhaps it's because women are so interested in looking at other women, not in a sexual way in the main, that we have overlooked the fact that men are probably looking too.'
Why, though, are we women so fascinated by other women's bodies? Why do we gawp at them so in Heat and Hello!? Dr Kerri McPherson, lecturer in psychology at Queen Margaret University College in Edinburgh, offers two explanations for this invasion of the body watchers. 'There's the classic sociocultural reasoning - that we are bombarded by images of perfect bodies and we internalise them to the extent that we're assessing everything against that standard. So we're in a constant state of judgment. But also at the heart of everything we do is the drive for reproduction. What women are striving for is to look better than the next person; we are all in competition with each other - far more so than with Nicole Kidman. The majority of us realise that we'll never look as good as the celebrities, so we choose to outshine our nearest rivals.'
As a result, we lumbered with what Joan Bakewell calls 'a self-regarding, body-conscious culture'. While freeing yourself from the shackles of clothing can have its upsides - a sense of liberation, celebration, a frisky, foxy kind of fun - it only works if you truly want to indulge. Those who don't can get crushed in the rush to shed our clothes and our inhibitions.
Feminist writer Joan Smith is concerned about this new pressure to expose. 'It depends on why you're doing it and who you're doing it for. If doing it makes you anxious, then clearly it's a bad thing. We still live in a culture which is punitive towards women; there's a tyrannical expectation of what women should look like.'
In the process, the body beautiful and its exposure has increasingly become women's first language. Take Victoria Beckham. She constantly looks as though she is offering her breasts to us on a tray, in the manner of a 1970s suburban hostess with a bowl of nibbles. Is it tyranny or liberation that requires her to use her breasts to define herself, now that her music career has gone pop and her golden marriage is tarnished? If ownership of an exhibition-standard body is the zenith of modern female endeavour, you have to wonder what Mrs Pankhurst would have to say about it. It's as if we have settled back, recognised the achievements of our gender and decided, right-ho, time to get the tits out then.
'It's intensely egotistical,' says Joan Smith. 'More than that, it assumes that if you get one thing right [in Beckham's case, knockout breasts], then everything else falls into place.' Clearly, it doesn't, something that Charlotte Church has realised. 'Britney and Beyoncé look great when they do their thing,' she shrugs. 'But I don't wanna be that. And I can't be bothered to get in shape to be that.' Perhaps that is the most liberating idea of the lot.
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