Why New York’s topless protest matters
For the last two weeks, New York City has been in the midst of a Battle of the Breasts, so to speak, as topless street performers known as the desnudas have come up against backlash from the NYPD and the Mayor’s Office for taking their best (painted) bodily assets and flaunting them in the high-traffic Times Square area.
“It’s wrong,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference last Wednesday. “I don’t like the situation in Times Square, and we’re going to address it in a very aggressive manner.”
As “burn the witches” as that statement may sound, protesters arrived in the Big Apple just in time for the eighth annual Go Topless Day to remind Mayor de Blasio and others that female toplessness is legal in New York City—and has been for quite some time (23 years, in fact!). Some of the 300 protesters carried signs that said, “Women’s Breasts are Family Friendly,” and “Nipple Pride!”
As the FreeTheNipple movement has often pointed out, toplessness is an issue of equal rights—women’s nipples are treated as obscene and hyper-sexualized both on social media and IRL, while men can walk around freely without a shirt and nobody bats an eye. That has to change, and one step towards moving the needle is exposure to the issue, in theory and in practice.
“We have boyfriends that always take their shirts off, and we were like, ‘This isn’t fair,’ ” one topless activist told The New York Times. Another described the act of protest as “liberating.”
But movement was not without its share of gawkers. As local blog Gothamist points out, the protest remains largely relevant because its main goal is and has always been to put a spotlight on rape culture and the objectification of the female body, something the group of about 50 women dealt with the entire time they were marching.
“The scene at Bryant Park was frankly a bit of creepshow,” wrote Gothamist’s Scott Lynch. “And though the speakers kept their remarks brief and most marchers split off into smaller groups, some women quickly grew weary of and irritated by the swarms of men with cameras.”
In other words, even with the law on their side, women continue to combat sexism from all sides whether that be staid mayors handing down edicts on what is and isn’t appropriate behavior for women, or men who are more than happy to turn what should be a moment of freedom for women into something demeaning and pornographic. Rape culture—and thus gender inequality—makes itself known in many different ways, and until we put a stop to it, protests like these are needed.
(Image via IFC/Free The Nipple)
