GoTopless Day, a day that advocates gender equality and women’s rights to display their breasts in public, was observed yesterday with female protesters taking to the streets of American cities with the backing of members of the opposite sex.
Every year, on the Sunday closest to Women’s Equality Day, which commemorates the day American women were granted the right to vote, GoTopless Day is observed.
In the Venice section of Los Angeles, around 50 men and women were strolling topless in front of a huge inflatable pink breast with the words “equal topless rights” inscribed on it.
‘My Body Is Not A Crime’ was written on a placard held by one marcher.
On the opposite side of the country, in New York City, where it has been acceptable to expose one’s breasts in public since 1992, a few dozen women and a few men marched down Broadway topless.
Some ladies led the march while holding a banner, while others drove a top-down convertible while towing two enormous inflatable breasts.
Spectators gawked and snapped pictures as the procession participants passed.
A number of activities, including marches, were scheduled for cities throughout the world, including New Hampshire, Denver, and more.
The gatherings in New York City and Los Angeles were only two of them.
The GoTopless movement’s proponents contend that women ought to have the same public freedom to remove their tops as do males.
Despite the fact that the practise is accepted across the board in more than 30 states, different cities and states have different rules regarding whether women may go topless in public.
GoTopless president Nadine Gray expressed her hope that the activities will lessen the thrill and horror associated with seeing female breasts.
This urge for women to go topless in the twenty-first century, she said, is as powerful as women’s desire to exercise their right to vote was in the previous century.
It may be sensuous, but being sensual is not against the law.
‘It’s in hopes to show people that it can be normal, that it’s really not a huge thing, and that it’s not about attracting attention or protesting,’ said Kia Sinclair, an event organiser for GoTopless Day at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire.
Additionally, Sinclair was a member of a group of women who helped prevent the state from passing legislation criminalising toplessness last year.
Only three states—Indiana, Utah, and Tennessee—forbid women from showing any skin in public.
However, there have been instances of women being detained for “disorderly behaviour” in locations where doing so is permitted by law.
The French spiritual figure Rael, who created the Raelien movement in 1974, founded GoTopless in 2007.
Only a minor portion of the Raelien manifesto, which also asserts that Earth was a lifeless rock until extraterrestrials arrived and poured life into it, focuses on liberating the nipple.
Rael believes that a person from another planet gave him a blueprint for governing the future of mankind and the Earth, which he has detailed in books.
Although the GoTopless movement seeks to advance gender equality and women’s freedom to expose their breasts in public, a recent research from Western Illinois University indicated that women are more outraged than men by women who expose their breasts in public.
More than 300 male and female participants were shown images of topless women in various settings and asked to judge the appropriateness of the images on a scale from one to eleven.
According to a research that was published in the journal Sexuality and Culture, males were on average two points more likely than women to be in favour of viewing naked breasts.
Professor Colin Harbke of Western Illinois University did not find it surprising that males were more receptive to seeing breasts in their everyday lives.
The expert did not anticipate that the respondent’s sexual orientation would be the main determining factor in whether or not they would find a photo appropriate, though.
The Times quoted Professor Harbke as saying, “There’s kind of a paradoxical pattern where the data suggests that women police other women’s behavior…and they do so by ascribing a notion of morality.”
It’s strange, he said, adding that it demonstrates how complex our behaviour is when we are actually only debating whether or not someone is wearing a top.