Why We Should Talk About Free the Nipple

Hey guys; I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re nearing the end of July now. And maybe this isn’t exactly something that I have the best experience with, seeing as I spend my days in my dark and dank, cavern-like basement with only my computer screen for light, but I hear tell of the myth of summer, this time when the world gets very, very hot, forcing people to strip down and wear fewer clothing.

And, okay, maybe I’m not entirely familiar with the concept of sun or beaches or swimming or going outside, but I am familiar with the strange sort of controversy that exists around this concept of wearing fewer clothing – a controversy that really exists every day of the year, thanks to women who insist on breastfeeding their baby (as though that was what boobs were meant for or something), but which gets more and more prevalent during the hotter months of the year.

And one of the main reasons why I’m aware of this controversy from my cavern-like basement is because of the Free the Nipple campaign.

Started in 2012 after a few incidences where women in the United States were charged with indecent exposure and public indecency for appearing topless in public (including in states like New York, where such things are supposed to be legal), the Free the Nipple campaign describes itself as centred around the idea of gender equality. Perhaps most notably, the equality that they take a special interest in is a woman’s right to take her shirt off and walk around with her tatas out.

And, I mean, sure. Why not? I mean, summers get hot, and ever sincethe 1930’s, men have had the right to walk around and make us all feel like we’re seeing way too much of their torso, so why can’t women have the same right? In fact, it might even make more sense for women to have the right to be publicly topless than men, because (as I briefly touched on before), women with babies often need to breastfeed them, and this involves exposing a boob or two. I mean, what else are we going to do with those breastfeeding mothers? Make tired, stressed-out women who have already pushed a human being out of their vagina hide away in the Bathroom of Shame while all of their lucky friends without children just go on with their lives? I mean, what sort of sense would that make?

So, yeah, let’s make this legal! Let’s fight for police to recognize our right to bare the boobs!

Except, this is already legal in many places in North America.

Despite this campaign’s beginnings in legality, you’d be surprised by the amount of places where it’s technically legal for women to walk around topless. In the United States, individual states have the right to dictate the legalities around female toplessness, and though these laws change frequently, you’d be surprised by the amount of states where boobs are actually legal. And then we have my country, Canada, wherein it’s actually legal for women to walk around topless almost everywhere – including and almost especially in my own province, Ontario.

Look, I know I just said that I don’t really get out much, but if this was the case, then you’d think I would have at least seen one public boob. But I haven’t. In fact, if I didn’t know that female toplessness was legal where I live, I wouldn’t have even guessed it.

I still see women covering up their boobs, all throughout the hot summers. I still hear about mothers who shock and gasp at a woman breastfeeding in public because “think of the children! What if my little Timmy sees a boob! A boob!!!!” And in fact, although I’ve never actually seen this mythological creature known as the publicly topless women, I’ve still heard people make snide comments about them when they see pictures – comments like, that’s disgraceful, and that’s so weird, and why doesn’t she respect herself and put some clothes on, and, at their most dangerous, she’s just asking for something to happen.

So if, legally and technically speaking, female toplessness is the same as male toplessness, why isn’t it treated the same?

Well, it’s because, societally speaking, female toplessness isn’t the same as male toplessness.

A lot of this comes down to the way that we tend to think about women and women’s bodies. Women’s bodies are often viewed as sexual objects in a way that men’s bodies aren’t. Technically speaking, breasts are just another part of the body – about as sexual as hands are, but the difference is that hands occur on every body, whereas breasts tend to grow most commonly on people who are assigned female at birth, and therefore, as a female body part, they are viewed as inherently sexual. It doesn’t matter that they can function also as food for babies, or as odd bags of fat that cling to your chest; they’re female body parts, which makes them sexual, which makes them bad, which means that you have to cover them up, no ifs, ands, or buts about it!

When a man appears shirtless in public, it can be for a lot of reasons. Maybe he’s hot (temperature-wise, I mean), or maybe he got his shirt dirty, or maybe he doesn’t own a shirt; who knows, really? When a woman appears shirtless in public, people will automatically assume that it is for only one reason: sex. She is ‘inviting attention’. She is ‘opening herself up’ to being leered at, to being flirted with, to being assaulted; if any of that happens to her, then she may not even be viewed as the victim, but as the cause. She has a female body that she isn’t ashamed of, which immediately means that she’s promiscuous, that she’s a ‘whore’, that she has no self-respect (and by the way, why would being promiscuous necessarily mean that you have no self-respect anyway?).

Except they’re just boobs. They are not inherently sexual. They’re body parts and little else, they say nothing about us and mean nothing.

If you want proof that boobs are sexualized to a ridiculous extent in our society, as well, then look at some of the responses to the Free the Nipple campaign, which include certain men claiming that boobs ‘belong in pornography’, and that if a woman earns the right to walk around with her tits out, then he should have the right to walk around with his dick out. In our society, a woman’s nipples are so intensely sexualized, that some men do not even see them as being the same as the nipples that they have on their own chests, but rather equate them to being the exact same thing as genitals. In our society, female nipples are deemed less of a body part, and more of a tool used in pornography to get men off.

And if Free the Nipple proves anything, it’s that this needs to change.

That’s the beautiful thing about all of this being societal too; this can change. Right now, it isn’t common or, in some cases, even safe for women to walk around topless, but that might not always be the case. With campaigns like Free the Nipple, we can keep talking about this, keep supporting women who want to go shirtless, keep pointing out how ridiculous it sounds to claim that female nipples belong in pornography and male nipples belong at the beach. And the more that we do, the more that people will begin to change their minds, and the more that society will change as a result.

So even if you aren’t comfortable baring your breasts this summer (and trust me, I get it if you aren’t), don’t forget about the women who are, and the women who are trying to be. Support those women, and talk about those women. Make those women normal, because someday, they might just be.