In Brisbane on a Sunday afternoon women gathered in a riverside park and took off their tops.
They weren’t there to sunbake, or for a Spencer Tunick installation.
Instead, they were having a #freethenipple picnic, complete with boob-iced cupcakes.
Some women kept their shirts on, others adorned themselves with paint, but for the most part there was a lot of breast, and very little fuss.
This is the idea.
Free the nipple events have been taking place around the world for a few years now, as women frustrated with traditional gender expectations and the constant sexualisation of female bodies attempt to wrest back control of their breasts.
Impromptu and organised Free the Nipple events have also taken place at a number of festivals across Australia, including Queensland’s Woodford Folk Festival and Victoria’s Meredith Music Festival.
Men, the argument goes, can walk around topless – so why can’t women?
Brisbane on a hot Summer’s day provided the perfect backdrop to explore the idea.
Picnic organsiers Amanda Haworth, 21 and Zoe Buckley Lennox, 22, created a Facebook event which quickly ballooned from just their friends to a group of over 800 “going”. Thousands indicated that they were interested in the picnic, ultimately about 50 people showed up.
“We want to share a space where women, [Non-Binary], and trans people are comfortable to take their shirts off, leave their shirts on or just leave their bra’s at home,” the event page description said.
While there were some threats and heated language thrown at the event organisers leading up to the picnic, the event itself was relatively subdued.
The #freethenipple movement has some high-profile celebrity supporters, including Demi Moore and Bruce Willis’ daughters Scout and Rumer, Rhianna and Miley Cyrus. In New York City women are legally allowed to go topless, but women rarely do because of the way women’s bodies have been sexualised.
Women and men have nipples, the argument goes, but only women are being asked to hide theirs.
The issue is further compounded by the position companies like Instagram have taken on women’s nipples. Censoring images with women’s nipples in them no matter what the context, but allowing some far more sexualised pictures that do not show nipples.
Rihanna famously quit the social media site over its refusal to allow her to post pictures that included her nipples, but has since returned to it.
Instagram updated its guidelines in 2015, but nipples are still out.
Watch Miley Cyrus explain her position on nipples:
Women who support the #freethenipple campaign say it is about de-sexualising women’s bodies and enabling women to choose for themselves how and when they bare all. It is also aimed at reducing the stigma around breastfeeding, and enabling more free discussion of and support for, women who have had mastectomies.
Breasts, the movement says, do not exist for the pleasure of men.
“We hope to grow to eventually make it so that men and women can live equally with each other, baring their chests and not suffering for it,” Brisbane picnic organiser Amanda Haworth said.
Top Comments
Really it's legal in New York? Wow!
If there's no specific law prohibiting actions/behaviour then it's considered legal. As far as I know there is no law in the state of New York prohibiting people from going topless. Same thing happened here in Australia when same-sex couples started getting married and the law needed to be changed so that only men and women could get married.
As a feminist I agree they are right in theory, breasts shouldn't be sexual, however I think even if women bare them for the next century they will be considered sexual, just the way that women have been baring their legs for about a century now and still men like the sight of a pair of shapely legs.
My fear with this bare the nipple thing is that all it will do will be to get men to oggle the women who have nice breasts and criticise the women who don't, not just the men actually the women too will critique each other. Because if you think of the evolution of "free the leg", at one time you couldn't even show your ankles, but eventually women could show their legs, so what happened, people criticise women who have chunky legs or chicken legs etc, and then women are expected to shave them, and then it became smaller bikinis which mean that women were expected to bikini wax then that evolved into women are now expected to have brazilians.
Because here is the thing when an area is taboo then no one is allowed to talk about it, once you break the taboo, there are some good things about that but it also means that anyone who wants to sexualise that area talk incessantly about how you need to improve it is open slather. And at the end of the day companies are trying to figure out how to make money, as someone said to me there is no money in hair that is why there is so much pressure for hair removal because Nair/Nads/Veet etc are making a lot of money.
So freethenipple will mean more women have to get breast surgery because they won't be considered to have bouncy enough breasts, a particular nipple size will come into vogue (either small or big nipples) and women will be queuing up to get their nipples smaller or larger. The Nipple will also need to be a certain colour, e.g. only pale pink will do. Then some punk will invent three nipples, it will go mainstream and then we will all have to get surgery to get a spare nipple put on because if we don't men will complain that they don't want to date us because we look disgusting with only 2 nipples.
Let's put all those cons and weigh them up against the pros of freethenipple.....hmmn can't think of any!
Also one last con, being white I already have to wear heaps of sunscreen when I go out and this was the first thing I thought of when I saw all those women with their knockers out, I just thought oh no if this becomes the fashion even more sunscreen for me to put on every time I leave the house in the summer!