V for Vixen
Laura Roberts
lroberts@hour.ca
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Ohio's summertime grassroots community festival: A friend to boobs
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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?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?
Laws against topless women seem linked to outdated notions of feminine decency, as well as moralizing governments intent on keeping "undesirable" people out of the public eye.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.
It is my feeling that more women in Canada are not going top free not because of fear of legal repercussions but because they feel that it is still not socially unacceptable. I think that this whole fear of going top free starts at a very early age and with the bra. We have an 11 year old granddaughter that is just beginning to show signs of breast development and her parents have already bought her a 'training' bra. Training for what? I think it just a conspiracy by bra manufacturers to to condition young women that they must never step out of their bedroom without first putting on a bra. They spend the rest of their life searching for a comfortable bra. My wife's 75 year old sister is very comfortable nude around us when she is here visiting but she would always have a bra on whenever she was dressed. I asked her why and she said that she never thought about it, she just automatically grabbed her bra when she started getting dressed. She is quite health conscious so I said that if she went on the Internet she probably would have trouble finding one argument that it is healthy to wear a bra all the time and could probably find five arguments against wearing a bra all the time. When she went home she started spending time without a bra and is loving the freedom. This just shows that women are somewhat trained to disguise their breasts at an early age and if the majority of women are afraid to appear in public without a bra then very few are going appear in public without a top. I believe the equality is generally there but women either don't want it or are not brave enough to try going top free.
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Don McLaughlin
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This is a simple matter of equality, and equal treatment under the law. Women should have the right to go bare chested, without any legal challange, in any situation a male would be permitted to be bare chested. That might include sunbathing, gardening, walking in the park, cutting the lawn, running a 10k, swimming, exercising....etc.
Everyone has a chest, and all chests have nipples. We all need to get over the fascination with exposed female breasts...and let them be a common as are shirtless men.
It may take some time for the blue noses and holier than thou types to get used to it....but the law and legal postions should be clear and unequivocal. Men and women should be treated exactly the same. There is no reason not to.
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Bruce Robert
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Thank you for one of the best ever articles on exposed breasts. So many points, so well presented!
One reaction we often hear is, "There are people I don't want to see topless" (women or men). Response: "Did someone declare this was about a beauty pageant? Do people have rights depending on what you think of their sex appeal? If you don't like something, don't look."
One issue is this, from Laura Roberts' article: "Women still aren't allowed to go topless in public." Probably they are. I hedge that only because of the way the law works in this country. There have been favourable rulings in the past 13 years in three provinces; others haven't had cases ruled on by a high enough court to be definitive.
People often assume that women can't be topfree because there's no law saying that's allowed. You don't need a legislative act for this, and no provincial legislator is going to propose one. Case law (in the courts) is enough, and often, as in B.C., quiet political directives will do it.
There's nothing in the Criminal Code that directly forbids women's topfreedom. Although we could try to establish that right by using equality provisions in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that's difficult and probably unnecessary.
Further cases are needed in various provinces to establish what we refer to as topfree equal rights for women. We have been saying for 12 years that women may choose to cover their breasts or not, but they should not be penalized in any way (from harassment to criminal charges) for either choice.
A country that early on legalized same-sex marriage can surely understand the points in Laura Roberts' article. For those who think this a frivolous issue, I recall the succinct words of the lawyer Carol Agate in California: "The issue is not trivial. The imposition on women is great, the inconvenience real, the stigma pernicious."
A recent statement? No. She said that in 1980. Even if we've come a long way, obviously there's work to be done.
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Paul Rapoport
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