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News :: Civil & Human Rights |
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Topfreedom: The Debate With A Bust |
Current rating: 0 |
by Robin E. Jensen
Email: rejensen (nospam) uiuc.edu (verified)
Phone: 217-384-3968
Address: 504 E. Michigan Ave. #30, Urbana, IL 61801 |
08 Nov 2003
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In 1996, Kayla Sosnow was hiking in the mountains with a male friend when they both decided to remove their shirts. Two forest rangers spotted the pair and demanded that Sosnow cover her chest. She refused to do so. Later, she said, "'I knew it was ridiculous that men had the right to go without a shirt and women didn't, so I was going to do something about it, which was just take my shirt off and be comfortable'" (Latteier, 1998, p. 161). Revealing her breasts that day cost her four days in a Florida jail, five months of probation, and over $600 in fines (p. 162). Even before Sosnow's absurd experience in 1996, people had been fighting to eliminate the gender discrimination involved in her case. Many of these people are proponents of â€Ĺ"topfreedom” which â€Ĺ"is the notion that women have the right to not wear a top in any situation that men also have that option” (â€Ĺ"Topfree!,” 2003). This article discusses the Topfreedom Movement and some of the arguments for and against its goals. |
Topfreedom: The Debate with a Bust
By Robin E. Jensen
On the smoldering summer evening of June 21, 1934, everything seemed normal at Coney Island in New York City. The beach was crowded with men, women, and children dipping into the water after a long day at work. Somewhere in this scene, a group of men decided to remove their bathing tops and perform calisthenics on the beach. The next day, The New York Times reported the scandalous incident. This was the second day in a row that men had refused to cover their chests in public. The men were arrested and rushed to the county courthouse. Fortunately, Magistrate William O’Dwyer saw nothing wrong with shirtless men in the public sphere and released them without penalty. To this day, the ease with which these men earned the right to go topfree stands in stark contrast to the efforts put forth by members of the opposite sex. For instance, approximately sixty years later a woman went to jail for going bare-breasted while hiking in an isolated area of the Osceola National Forest. She was also forced to endure five months on probation, fifty hours of community service, and payment of $600 for various fines and fees. Canadian Evangeline Gordon suffered a similar, if less extreme, fate in 1998 for swimming topfree in a city swimming pool. At 64 years old, she was deemed a “threat to society” and, therefore, forced to spend two days in jail.
Clearly, most women in the United States and Canada have yet to earn the same right that men earned back in 1934. (I say “most women” because in several places including New York State and the city of Moscow, Idaho, they have earned the right to go topfree in public). In order to expose this long-overlooked form of gender discrimination, feminists around the world have joined the Topfreedom Movement which holds that women should have the right to go without a top at any time or place that men have this right. Topfree groups including The Topfree Equal Rights Association, or TERA, and Topfreedom USA are built around the tenets of liberal feminism aimed at creating equality for men and women alike. In an effort to re-appropriate women’s bodies back to the women that physically inhabit them, members avoid the connotation-laden and heavily stigmatized label “topless” in favor of the term “topfree.” One of the core beliefs in the Topfreedom Movement is the idea that women should be able to choose whether to wear a shirt or to go topfree at parks, swimming pools, and other informal areas. Many female proponents of topfreedom, myself included, have never (and may never) removed their shirts in a public setting. Their goal is not to encourage or require women to remove their shirts, but rather to provide women with the same opportunities that men enjoy.
Topfreedom fighters are often asked why, in an age of international terrorism, war in Iraq, AIDS, and poverty, their movement is worthy of our attention? Yet perhaps the real question we should be asking is why our country is devoting so many of its resources to controlling women’s breasts when other issues so desperately need attention? What does our society gain from the regulation of women’s bodies? Before addressing this significant question, it is important that we discuss the breast’s position within modern society and the arguments currently keeping it covered.
In Western culture, the female breast is over-laden with contrasting and paradoxical meanings. The breast has consistently played a central role in the perception of women as divine idols, sexual deviants, consumers, mothers, citizens, employees, and medical patients. It is both a symbol of the scared role of motherhood and, at the same time, of the erotic. For the most part, the status quo has been to treat women’s chests as inherently different from men’s chests and therefore worthy of different treatment in the public sphere. As a guest columnist for USA Today argued in the July 6, 1989 edition of the newspaper, “Bare-chested and bare-breasted are not the same,” and should not be treated as if they are the same. Others argue that allowing women to be topfree in the public sphere will lead to increased cases of sexual assault and will be harmful for children. Yet women’s breasts are not part of the human genitalia and, thus, are sexual only in the way that a woman’s legs or arms are sexual. Just as men are expected to control themselves in the presence of women’s legs, arms, and necks, they can also control themselves in the presence of women’s breasts. Similarly, given the fact that most babies are initially nourished by breasts it is ridiculous to claim that exposure to those same breasts is in any way harmful to children. Advocates of the status quo allege that topfreedom goes against common courtesy and community standards, but I fail to see how forcing a woman to degrade herself and her child by breastfeeding in a restroom or to expose her body only in areas that profit from her exposure is anything but an insult to a community.
This last argument touches on one of the main reasons that modern society refuses to relinquish control of the female breast. Our society has produced a political economy of the breast where the female body is sold as a commodity. This profit-driven system requires that women’s breasts be strictly regulated and restricted to certain areas so that they can be sold and exploited in magazines, on television, and in various adult establishments. If women were allowed to have control over their own bodies, covering or uncovering their chests whenever they pleased, certain consumer markets would suffer financial losses without this huge source of revenue. If the general public was privy to the reality of what the average female body actually looks like, as opposed to the images of glossed-over models and actresses that people see so often in the media, perhaps our society would appreciate women of different shapes and sizes and begin to respect older women in the same way that they currently respect older men. If women were to view the truth about themselves and the women around them, perhaps they would stop worrying so much about their supposedly inadequate appearances and compete for the educational opportunities, jobs, and privileges that their male counterparts tend to take for granted.
Women’s health and overall wellbeing also suffers in our current system. Requiring women to cover their breasts in situations where men are not required to do so teaches women that their bodies are unacceptable and objects of which they should be ashamed. Correspondingly, topfreedom advocates argue that when women are ashamed of their breasts they are less likely to breastfeed their children, perform breast self-examinations, and get regular mammograms and check ups from a physcian. Fortunately, as women develop the sense of bodily agency that the Topfree Movement advocates, they will be better equipped to avoid feelings of body shame and be able to take care of themselves. Surly there would be a marked decrease in the number of cases of eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression, and breast implant disasters in a world where topfreedom is the norm for both genders.
Ultimately, the Topfreedom Movement is about exposing and deconstructing a cultural assumption that has done much to make women’s lives more difficult than need be. The notion that women and men are equal and therefore deserving of the same rights and opportunities for choice is central to the tenets of our democratic society. The laws that prohibit women from taking off their shirts when men are free to do so are not only discriminatory but harmful to our entire social order. With the Topfreedom Movement, Western women are finally approaching a level of equality and liberation that has never been available to them in the past.
For more information about the topfreedom movement, visit these websites: http://www.tera.ca/index.html, http://right2bare.tripod.com/right2bare/index.html, http://www.topfreedom.com/index.html, http://www.topfreedomusa.0catch.com/, and http://www.geocities.com/womens_choice_org/topfreedom.html.
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See also:
http://www.tera.ca/index.html
http://www.topfreedomusa.0catch.com/
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Re: Topfreedom: The Debate With A Bust |
by Jesse VanZant
jessev (nospam) emerytelcom.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
28 Aug 2004
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All this is good, but nobody has looked at the base of this self-hatered law. People use the excuse in religion to keep us suppressed. With the loss of material if freedom of self body was in the clear. Some people can't be happy if they don't live in violence so magic is made up to protect that abuse. Then we have to change our morals to match when (our) hate is in control. |
