Women Foregoing Their Tops In Public... Right or Privilege?

This morning 2 female columnists (Ellen Koven and Denise Covert) over at newsjournalonline.com wrote an opinion piece titled "Is it ever OK to go topless?"

This particular topic was chosen with a woman named Elizabeth Book in mind. If you're not familiar with Ms. Book's story and the lawsuit she recently settled against the city of Daytona Beach, this link will familiarize you with it. Basically, Ms. Book, a 45-year-old Ormond Beach resident and mother, has shown her breasts publicly since 2004 in protest of the city's public nudity ordinance. She was arrested in March 2004 and again in July 2005. She sued the city of Daytona Beach, seeking $100,000 for attorneys' fees and damages stemming from what her attorney, Lawrence Walters, called negligence, false arrest and malicious prosecution. Courts ruled in Book's favor, so the city changed its ordinance last November to include language from past federal court rulings that say a person does not have a constitutional right to public nudity if they are protesting a nudity ordinance.

To summarize the opinion piece (for those too lazy to click the above link and read it themselves), Ms. Koven wishes women would, "keep [their] shirt[s] on" and Ms. Covert says that, "it's a privilege, not a right" for women to go topless in public. To say the least, their opinions, especially as female journalists, shocked me!

Personally, I find most "American's" prudish behavior with regards to women being topless in public ridiculous. Men don't get any flack for their public toplessness when cutting the grass, while working on their car, or at the beach; so why should women? Broken down on a purely anatomical level, men and women have essentially the same parts upstairs (I read a book once titled "Why Do Men Have Nipples" that explained this is because males actually start off in their mother's womb as females, but later on in the pregnancy develop their male parts, but I don't even want to begin getting into how much that weirds me out).

Now, I know what you're thinking... "You’re a male; of course you love the idea of women topless in public."  While that may be true (because as a heterosexual male, I do love topless women, on a truly prehistoric level); I also believe the old adage that goes something like, "what's good for the goose, is good for the gander." Women have fought hard for decades, through the women's suffrage and civil rights movements, to be acknowledged as having equal rights as their male  counterparts.  We as a society have come a long way, from not allowing women to vote, to having a female Secretary of State in Condeleezza Rice and a viable (at least for a time) female candidate for a major political party's Presidential nominee, in Democrat Hillary Clinton. Why can't we, as a country, get over a woman's exposed breasts?  urope isn't shocked by it, and we (at least I like to think) a far more forward thinking than our European brethren.  This is far from the fact that in the story that started this debate, the women who went topless in public, did so in order to protest and call attention to the equal treatment of women (being allowed to go topless in public) under the law; and the city of Daytona Beach wrongfully arrested her, even though the city ordinance she was arrested under at the time, allowed for public nudity in the name of protest. The government should have no say in whether a women may go topless in public, genitalia is a different story, but boobs are boobs, whether on a male or female... what do you think?  Do you agree with the opinions of Ms. Koven and Ms. Covert? Or do you agree with me; in the opinion that it is a woman's equal legal right to be able to go topless and top-free in the same public settings as a man, and that the government should just stay out of the issue as a matter of equal protection and free expression, two rights guaranteed to all Americans under our great Constitution?   

- Zac Papantoniou (Guest Writer)

Comments

[RWW]

Equal rights, man.

[Hunter]

I'm fully of the "get over it, you don't have the right to not to be offended" camp. Getting excited about things like women going topless in public is a mug's game, considering that it doesn't practically matter one way or the other whether a woman goes topless or not. Your own personal revulsion over seeing boobs is yours alone, and I just don't care enough to want to help you get over it.

("You" used liberally to avoid feats of locution that I'm incapable of at the moment.)

[Bob L]

It's amazing: you are born here naked, you constitutionally have the absolute right to live here, but somehow you can't do both simultaneously? We're missing something, right?

[Zac Papantoniou]

I completely agree, Hunter and Bob L. Now, I'm not saying women (or anyone for that matter) should walk around in public showing their genitalia... It's unsanitary, would most likely cause emotional and psychological harm to young children and should someone want to be naked "downstairs", they may obviously do so in their own home.. but going topless, when men and women have the same parts, should be considered equally protected when doing so; If someone is offended by seeing womens' breasts, I recommend that they never go to Europe or South America. The human body is a beautiful (and sometimes not so beautiful) thing, it can cause arousal and disgust, but both of those reactions are utterly ridiculous when it comes to bearing one's chest...

[Leah]

As a breastfeeding mother, I think that it is just beyon ridiculous that people are still so skeeved out by breasts. Women who nurse are still told to cover up and be "discreet" - when using breasts to feed infants is the biological norm. Just because breasts CAN be sexual in the right context does not mean that they should be hidden. Lips can be sexual in many contexts, but no one freaks out at how disgusting it is when you eat with them. I fully support womens' right to go topless.

[Paul]

This is just fucking fantastic. Well now we are just a jump, skip and a hop away from being just like the middle east, woohoo! Today, arresting women for being topless. Tomorrow, throwing acid in their faces for having sex. Jesus, each day I regret reading the news, it just makes me want to vomit. I'm still confused as to how people actually have the time to worry about such frivolous things. I mean, with the economy the way it is, government gaining more and more control over our daily lives, falling educational standards, and a horrible health care system, people need to get their fucking priorities straight. Turn off the goddamn TV, get your fat ass out of the house and start doing something USEFULL for society.

[Phelps]

The original was, "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." Just sayin'.

[teqjack]

OTOH, via ammiewearingfool.blogspot.com,
we find someone ogling men's chests has peeping-tom conviction overturned -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=566585&in_page_id=1770
"The intention of Parliament was to mean female breasts and not an exposed male chest," Lord Justice Hughes explained.

[M.]

In NYC courts have ruled that women can, indeed, go topless. They usually don't, having a great deal of common sense, but they can if they want! It certainly isn't anyone else's business, as I see it. It isn't dangerous to other people or threatening to other people. Oh, except maybe to Ellen Koven and Denise Covert.

[Dave]

I agree with you that women should have the right to go topless but I think for most women not going topless isn't about rights it's about mystery. If you can't see it you want to see it all the more. If they look like crap (all tits are not created equal) you'll probably never know but you'll always want to. She would much rather have men wonder than to actually know. Europe is much more tolerant and it shows. The average woman drops her top at the beach and no one notices. That wouldn't be good for the average American woman's morale. I lived on the beach for 25 years or so and in the '70s the town made topless legal for women. It was great at first, all us guys loved it but after a while if someone came in the bar and said that there was a bunch of topless college girls on the beach we wouldn't get up from a beer or pool game to bother to look. The law is still on the books I think yet you seldom see a woman on the public beach with her top off. I think they should have the right but a little mystery is better for most of us.

[Hermes Ten]

I left a comment on the photoblog of a Spanish photographer that depicted topless women on a Spanish beach. I told him that here in the "land of freedom" that would get you arrested. He thought I was kidding. Outside of the worlds other fundamentalist countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, American prudery is incomprehensible.

[Ragnar Danneskjöld]

You forgot choice #3

1. Right
2. Privilege
3. Awesome

[Larry]

I was just wondering how long it will take to get use to seeing bare breasted women walking down the street. We can already see them on some topless beaches already.Men wasn't allowed to take off their tops until the 1920's.Back then it was wicked and shocking.I noticed that the women got use to it over time.Now it is almost a daily thing to see men without their shirts and nobody gives it a second thought.Will the women have the same opportunities that we have? Can they go unnoticed and not get stared at? How long will it take that we will accept them like they accepted us? Will we get so use to seeing them that they will feel equal to us men? Women's breasts has always been some of their power over men. If they wanted men to do some things and we didn't want to,out comes the low cut blouses or shirts. The power that they use would be cut down from what they use to have.We would be so use to seeing them that we would no longer be paying them any attention.Now that has being said,would they want to give up the power? I personally would love to see them climb up the ladder and be equal to us on this and every other point.Would I be comfortable seeing her out on the town,going to a nice play and then to a fancy eatery with her topless,I don't know. I guess it will have to happen first and I'll see if we are both comfortable with it and that we won't both get arrested.Maybe the time will come but I don't think it will happened any day soon,at least in my life time.