BUSTING OUT
Summer is finally here! As the temperatures climb towards sweltering and the humidex registers somewhere in the “muggy and sweaty” range, the clothes inevitably start to come off. Despite Montreal’s permissive attitudes towards strip clubs, sex shops and swingers – who, as you may have heard, were forced to run from the burning Auberge 1082 in their birthday suits two weeks ago – women still aren’t allowed to go topless in public, even for sunbathing purposes. Is this really fair?
"Topfree group at Barton Creek," image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
While some may argue that the types of people who choose to go topless are precisely the types of people no one wants to see topless, the crux of the issue is really one of gender equality. If men are allowed to bare their sweaty, naked torsos to the sun’s rays, then why shouldn’t women be similarly privileged? After all, public nudity is public nudity, so what’s up with this archaic double standard?
No sex, please, we’re naked
If it’s a matter of offensiveness or claims of “public decency,” I must point out that the naked human form is not always an erotic display. Both in real life and in art, nudity need not indicate that one is hot and horny and ready to fuck. Perhaps you’re changing your clothes, taking a shower, posing for a life drawing class, or simply dying of heat because it’s 32 degrees Celsius and your A/C has conked out.
Obviously, there’s a time and a place for stripping down, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that we all engage in full-time nudity (especially in a part of the world with only three or four months of warm weather), there are certainly valid reasons for wanting to remove one’s shirt in public. And most, if not all, do not actually suggest sex. Rather, they speak to an individual’s discomfort due to extraordinary heat or perhaps the need to breast-feed a baby more comfortably.
While I will agree that certain exposed chests are sexy in the right time and place, there are just as many non-sexual occasions in which people might choose to expose their chests. Should this really be illegal for women, no matter what the circumstances?
Waiting topless from The Sunday Best on Vimeo.
Laws against topless women seem linked to outdated notions of feminine decency, as well as moralizing governments intent on keeping “undesirable” people out of the public eye. Yet if that’s the case, consider the fact that most of the shirt-free chests you’ll see on a daily basis belong to the types of men you don’t even want to imagine naked. Aren’t these men, flashing their bulging beer guts, wild wildebeest chest hair and floppy man-titties without remorse, far more “undesirable” persons than any topless women could be?
Full-frontal fairness
Though I disagree with their “spiritual leader” on most other points, it seems some of the most visible people organized enough to speak on the subject of female toplessness are the Raelians. They’ve actually got a website devoted to female topless equality called GoTopless.org, and suggest that Aug. 23 should be viewed as the Go Topless Protest Day where, naturally, women should dare to bare.
Hot damn!
While the site claims that Aug. 23 is the designated date for Women’s Equality Day, and the Go Topless Protest Day is intended to coincide with this annual event, the Raelians are a few days premature with their ejaculations. Women’s Equality Day is actually Aug. 26, and was established in 1971 by Bella Abzug, an American congresswoman and social activist. Still, the Raelians make an interesting point, which is that, constitutionally speaking, if men and women do not have equal rights to go bare-chested in public, then this is really an equal-rights issue.
While many women these days still refuse to consider themselves feminists, believing that the struggle for equal rights is long over, it’s obvious that this is not the case. Perhaps the fight over the right to bare busts is not as weighty or important an issue as the continuing fight for equality in wages, reproductive rights or many others, but it’s definitely an example of the way that society continues to look down on women based on gender differences.
After all, will a woman’s bare breasts cause a riot? Will a glimpse of nude flesh really cause such a stir? And if it does, should women as a whole be blamed for a society that views their breasts not as normal, natural entities with a specific biological purpose, but as sexualized orbs, bouncing and jiggling purely for others’ entertainment?
For more information on going top-free and women’s rights, check out the Topfree Equal Rights Association online at www.tera.ca.
(Originally published at Hour.ca)
