What a bare-breasted romp through Central Park can teach us about evolving social attitudes.
When I read this lovely article from 2011 by Jamie Peck about actually exercising her legal freedom to go topless in public, I was reminded of our own Ozy Frantz’s recent post about why this freedom should be not only legal, but socially condoned. (Warning: both links may contain boobs.)
That difference, between legal and condoned, is sharply illustrated in Ms. Peck’s piece:
About an hour into my walk, one of New York’s finest pulled up alongside me in one of those little ticketmobiles they drive.
“Hey!” he yelled.
“Yes, officer?”
“I know the law says you’re allowed to do this or whatever, but there are kids around.”
The word “law” was dripping with contempt. He clearly hated this “law,” and wished he could ticket me.
“Is there a part of the park where kids aren’t allowed?”
“Just use your brain. This isn’t appropriate. I don’t know what you think you’re doing–”
“Hanging out in the park?”
Compare this to Ozy’s take on the subject:
My latest project has been asking people to explain why women can’t take their shirts off in public. Barring circular answers (“it’s obscene!” “it’s just not appropriate”) and irrelevancies (“hubba hubba”), the answers have mostly been in two groups:
1) “Men aren’t attractive the same way women are.”
2) “There are some men who will, you know, take that as an invitation…”
It’s intriguing that the criticism Ms. Peck faced never even made it past the circular answers Ozy describes; folks who have a problem with boobs in public seem, in practice, to get as far as “Obscenity… children… STUFF!” and no farther.
Most encouraging, though, is how little of Ms. Peck’s bare-breasted wandering of Central Park actually did draw criticism. Most people were perfectly okay with it. This may be a sign that acceptance of female toplessness is reaching a tipping point, where women’s bodies are considered more equivalent to those of men, rather than being a frighteningly Othered category. I think most of us will be able to live with that, don’t you?
Photo—No show from Shutterstock
About Noah Brand
Seems like a rather exhibitionist experiment, really, what’s the point? Are sports bras or tank tops so bad? No. Frankly, I don’t really want to see half naked guys in the park either.
Oh come ON.
There’s a breath-taking absence of self-awareness and common sense in these threads. It comes down to shutting their eyes tight, sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming out “Not listening! Not listening!” to anyone who tries to explain that two plus two is four.
Guess what? Womens breasts are not considered the same as men’s. But of course everyone knows that. The picture at the top of this thread (possibly not chosen by the author) places hands over the woman’s breasts whereas other pictures at TGMP have shown a man topless. Again if you look through to the article linked above you will see the author of that article (Jamie Peck) topless but artfully covering her “naughty bits”. Why? Apparently she doesn’t believe her own spin. Apparently it’s OK to go bare in NYC in public but not on her own blog?
How can anyone take such an advocate seriously?
I did note that Ozy decided to put up a photo of a topless woman in her article but of course she had to then label the entire article as NSFW (maybe this one ought to be too). Why? Because Ozy knows there’s a difference between men and women going topless.
It wouldn’t be one thing if Noah and Ozy were arguing that we ought to treat a topless man and a topless woman the same. But they aren’t. They are saying that they already are the same thing.
Women can’t go topless? Discrimination! It couldn’t possibly be because public nudity is banned for both men and women. Because women’s breasts aren’t naughty at all. But as someone pointed out in the last thread what if a man came up to that topless woman in the park and took a photo of her to put on the internet? or touched her breast? Suddenly the woman’s breasts are a sexual area. Suddenly that’s an invasion of privacy or even sexual assault.
What is really going on there?
What is not going on is a presentation to argue that women’s breasts should not be considered sexual or “nudity”.
I too am curious why the first article covered the nipples. In fact, why are nipples see as so damn sexual n offensive, you can cover the nipples with pasties and be a-ok? Bikinis barely cover the majority of the breast at times and this is ok, but bare boob is somehow bad?
Who gives a shit if boobs are showing, let both go topless. The sight of a boob, no matter how saggy, isn’t going to scar minds. We see animals naked every day but don’t lose our minds over it…
>Again if you look through to the article linked above you will see the author of that article (Jamie Peck) topless but artfully covering her “naughty bits”. Why? Apparently she doesn’t believe her own spin. Apparently it’s OK to go bare in NYC in public but not on her own blog?
The first page is covered as a NSFW buffer, but the post is 4 pages long. You can go look at her nipples on the 2nd/3rd if you’re that interested.
I need to stop reading articles late at night, I missed the page buttons :S ( I also hate multiple short articles). Firefox needs an auto-one-page mode.
Nonsense. If I went up to a woman who was barefoot in the grass and took her picture to put on a foot fetish site that would be inappropriate. Yes men and women’s chests are different. But that’s really the fault of the beholder. It’s not the lady’s fault and she shouldn’t be restricted just because everyone else has a hang up.
I’m kind of free and easy about whatever is defined as ‘sexuality’. And I don’t like anyone walking around with their shirt off. All that sweat and distraction – it’s just not acceptable to bring it all out. Of course, I’m currently wearing a fairly sheer summer dress because its 101 freaking degrees here. Naked or half naked might feel better, but only marginally, and I couldn’t go into the store for my horchata. Cover up, keep it clean. Go have sex in the back yard, under the sprinkler, like sane people.
You’re equating topless with sexuality though, where does “Go have sex in the back yard, under the sprinkler, like sane people.” even remotely come into play with women being topless? I see babies breastfeed, breasts are exposed, where’s the sexuality in that? Where’s the sexuality in a bare breast with no babies attached? If the women are sitting there rubbing them sensually I could see your point but walking around with the girls free is pretty mundane, it’d be interesting for a while to many people but normalization would probably occur and I doubt anyone would bat n eyelid much, or if anything it’d be similar to seeing a guy topless.
Women’s breasts are sexual. I am not sure why as a man that’s difficult to understand. I see women’s breasts every single day and I still find them sexual
“normalization would probably occur and I doubt anyone would bat n eyelid much, or if anything it’d be similar to seeing a guy topless”
Its normal to see women in tight pants, normal to see them with cleavage. I still find it sexual. I am not sure what normal has to do with anything.
That said I don’t know what is so wrong with sex? So what if women’s breasts are sexual. This doesn’t imply that women can’t go topless. I thought sex was this great fantastic thing and supposedly none of us are prudes. OK then its find for women to parade around topless.
What they want to do — or demand is already true — is to social engineer how people feel about the taboo on women’s breasts. And that’s impossible. You can’t just wave a magic wand and say “From now on men won’t get a boner when they see a womans boobs“. Breasts are a secondary sexual characteristic. That stuff is hard wired by the DNA. Even if wasn’t, you can’t just flip a switch and change a society’s taboos.
And if you could…. sure as hell I’d have a million better things to do with that power. Remove the taboo on eating insects maybe (great for the environment). Remove racism. Remove authoritarianism. Stop people being afraid of anyone different. Perhaps make everyone bisexual. All that power and these guys just want to make boobs non-sexual!
And frankly even if the only power the magic wand had was to change if people get off on certain body parts or not, wouldn’t it be better to go the other way? Wouldn’t more sexy parts be a better use of the magic wand instead of less? Or maybe make men’s bodies more attractive to women instead of making women’s bodies less attractive to men. Maybe if women had the same sort of reaction to male beauty as men do to women, we’d be able to have sexual equality.
I’d say if anything it may lower the OMGSEXYNESS of it, men in nudist colonies tend to get over their boners at the sight of nudity fairly quick from what I hear. The entire female body can turn a person on, legs, ass, torso, arms, neck, head, face, etc. But what I am saying is that if we saw breasts out all day or even regularly in public I doubt anyone would give a damn. Do you get massive boners when you see the topless of some of the African women on tv (or any other culture that seems to go topless a lot)? I don’t get boners at every pair of tits I see, I am a man, shouldn’t I automatically get a boner at every set?
Some/hell probably many women get turned on by an attractive man’s chest, it’s sexually arrousing for them, but it isn’t seen as sexual. Why is that? Any part of the body can be sexually arrousing, so what is it about the breasts in particular that are seen as sexual vs a hand (zomg hands give handjobs, they’re sexual!)
Yes and no. Yes, female breasts are seen as a secondary sexual characteristic, and that likely comes from prehistoric men viewing women with large breasts as being more fertile. However, it is not hardwired into our DNA to the point that we cannot overlook the sexual characteristic in non-sexual situations. Just being nude is not an invitation to sex. For thousands of years humans went nude apparently without any problem. In some countries women are topless and no one thinks twice about it because that is their culture.
We can change the way society reacts to topless women, but we cannot do that if people, particularly women, still want to view women’s breasts primarily in a sexual way.
“Just being nude is not an invitation to sex.”
Who said anything of the sort. “Invitation to sex” isn’t what is being discussed, it is the sexuality of breasts. You’re treading a very thin line here with this “invitation to sex” bit, skirting the implication of finding something sexual equivalent to rape
That stuff is hard wired by the DNA.
That’s a pretty silly assertion, unless you have some reputable scientific evidence to back it up. There is zero evidence that the sexualization of breasts is “hard wired,” and in fact the large number of cultures that don’t sexualize breasts (or didn’t prior to massive exposure to the western attitude) tend to indicate that culture is the dominant influence on how we see breasts.
Yes, female breasts are seen as a secondary sexual characteristic, and that likely comes from prehistoric men viewing women with large breasts as being more fertile.
Secondary sexual characteristics are biological features that differ between the sexes, like Adam’s apples, facial hair, and male-pattern baldness. They are not necessarily things that are seen as attractive. If you have good scientific evidence that prehistoric women saw big-breasted women as more fertile please present it, otherwise you’re just regurgitating ill-supported pop-evo-psych.
I’m not trying to be rude here, but as a biologist, it’s really annoying to see these evolutionary arguments presented as fact when they are not supported by any evidence that I’ve even seen.
I am generalizing here but I have heard that women being topless isn’t as social taboo in other parts of the world namely Western Europe. I could be incorrect in this assertion. Hopefully we will move from legal to socially condoned to accepted to a social more.
No, you can’t just walk around naked (or topless) in Europe. I was trying to Google it but a few years back there was some advert on a hoarding in France that was banned because it featured nearly topless female models. I think it may have been a Perrier advert and the women were “wearing” only bottle tops. Something like that. The advert caused traffic accidents because it was so distracting.
Maybe you could allow only women who are NOT distractingly beautiful to go topless but in that case I think you’d lose a lot of the popular support for the whole idea as reflected in polling.
I really have no idea what on earth the point of this “issue” is. It’s not like there’s a lot of women who want to go around topless. Where there already is (stupidly) a legal right to do it you never see women taking advantage of it. If women want to shed some clothes on a hot day they already have scores of varieties of bikini tops they can choose to wear (an option that men do not have of course). If it was a campaign for people to be able to just walk around completely naked I could at least see it as having some sort of principle behind it.
As it is I can’t help feeling it’s a completely manufactured “issue” so that some people can complain for the sake of complaining.
I don’t think going topless has enough support to make it possible. For some it may not matter too much. But for others, say those with above average size breasts, there would not be enough support to make it practical.
Can’t tell if making pun on “support” or not
Ditto, I am much much more comfortable in a bra (40D). Also, not thrilled with the idea of sunburned nipples. Also I’m extremely pale and need to avoid the sun for the sake of my skin.
Here’s something to think about, ladies. I’m 45. I never spent much time in the sun, so my skin is in good shape. My face looks great for my age (At least I think so!) because I always wore sunscreen on my face. But I often neglected to put sunscreen on the top of my chest. The skin there is probably the most damaged of any place on my body. It’s freckly and getting wrinkly.
But the skin on my breasts? Smooth and soft as they were when I was 16. Because they have never been in the sun.
I remember going to Club Med a few years ago and seeing all these topless European women whose breasts looked like leather handbags. No thanks!
I personally have zero problem with women being topless anywhere men can. It’s outright discrimination. Hiding breasts is what sexualizes them more than anything else, by creating mystery. My two cents.
“Hiding breasts is what sexualizes them more than anything else”
Again why is it a bad thing that breasts are sexual? Is this because sex is bad?
Actually, mens’ chests are sexual to a lot of women, but guys get to run around all sexy and topless as much as they want. As a bi guy, trust me on this.
“where women’s bodies are considered more equivalent to those of men, rather than being a frighteningly Othered category.”
Aside from the use of the trigger word “frightening”, is this what women want? Is this what we all want? to see each other as the same, as equivalent? To disavow any differences whatsoever? Do we really seek an asexual existence, where the sexes don’t exist? Must we take this route to attain equity?
I suppose I should clarify. I have no problems with toplessness being legal. It is here in Ontario, and no issues or complaints (I like breasts, I like seeing breasts)… But the idea of seeing them as no different from men’s, of male and female breasts being equivalent, and that failing to do so is somehow a “frightening” (really?) “othering” (implication that difference is a bad thing, and in this case “frighteningly” bad.), this just takes things too far. equal opportunities, not outcomes.
In certain contexts it is considered more okay for men to show their chest than woman. However I believe it should be noted that in other contexts it is considered far less appropriate for men to show their chests than women. In most work environments it might be considered only mildly inappropriate or not inappropriate at all for women to show a considerable portion of their chests. In many work environments however it is extremely egregious and offensive for men to show too much chest. Double standards are far more complex and contradictory than people often realize.
I respect the idea that a woman can show her breasts in public. I think however that the same thing that Ozy says about women’s breasts could be applied to male genitals. We don’t have a rational reason why we feel uncomfortable about those thing but I think we can still respect people’s feelings since it just seems on an intuitive level to be very extreme for example to condone the idea of men being completely naked in public.- maybe someday nudity can and should be accepted but we have to work on changing how we feel about those things- feeling should be considered as important reasons in themselves.
Breasts are not inherently sexual. The sexuality of breasts is cultural, not biological, and culture can change. 100 years ago, it was considered inappropriate for a woman to show her legs in public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_sex_characteristic
You’ve proved they’re different between genders to a degree, but not that they’re sexual and men’s aren’t. I guess the adam’s apple is sexual too?:P
How do we prove that breasts are sexual or not sexual? The fact of the matter is that society feels that the chests of both men and women are sexual. Yes, men as well. Men’s chests are deeply sexualized. While it is often considered more appropriate for men to show their chests than women in other contexts it is considered more appropriate for women to show their chests. For example in some work environments it would be considered much more egregious and offensive for a man to bare parts of his chest than it would be for a woman where it might not be considered egregious or offensive at all.
OUR SOCIETY feels this way. It’s not true of every human society that has ever been, or even exists today.
I am not denying that. But I suspect that the “sexualization” of breasts is much more universal than a purely constructivist approach would assert. There is a false dichotomy at work here however. Societies do encode the body with sexuality to varying degrees and we say that is a “constructivist” world view but there is a deeper approach to constructivism that comes from European feminism that questions how we construct the meaning of the symbolic possibilities of embodiment. It is a more fluid and balanced way of approaching the dichotomy of essentialism and anti-essentialism. Can we re-encode the idea that a sexual body is threatening or degrading with one that is encoded with a more positive meaning? I think that we can in fact envision a way of accepting the body as sexual without perceiving it in ways that make us uncomfortable. But insofar as these codes are embedded into our culture some people will be uncomfortable with exposing children to female breasts and I think that is totally understandable and it seems to me an example of ideological aloofness to fail to realize that. But there are different cultures such as France where nudity is found on billboards which sell ice-cream. I doubt that that isn’t entirely uncontroversial even in France however. Breaking free from taboos however involves much more than a combative approach of defying social boundaries, it involves an underlying cultural shift and examination of what it means to be human and a sexual creature.
Definition of sexualization in America: If it is deemed sexual. we freak the fuck out.
I suppose that puts things more succinctly. However I think we have to look at things not just in an America vs. some other more enlightened country dichotomy. There is an underlying but unarticulated set of rationales behind our beliefs about sexuality and it is those beliefs and rationales that must be reconsidered. Every culture must figure out for itself the meaning of sexuality and promote those meanings which are the most healthy and the most balanced. In America men are aggressive and expected to be aggressive, other ways of regarding men are often unconsciously not even considered. When we combine that way of thinking with sexuality then male sexuality becomes necessarily a form of imposition. We are also afraid of women that embrace their sexuality because we feel that they are somehow betraying and degrading the female form in order to extract some kind of selfish gain. This is a complex subject matter.
David, facial hair and male-pattern baldness are also secondary sex characteristics. Are they inherently sexual? Should balding and/or bearded men have to go around with bags over their heads?