‘Bare boobs will not make a better world’
Before the federal election is called and ruins everyone’s summer vacation, let’s take a moment to opine about the last silly subject of the season: the right for women to bike ride topless.
Last week, three sisters from Kitchener, Ont. — Alysha, Tameera and Nadia Mohamed — cycled bare-breasted through a residential neighbourhood on a hot night, in what they described to CTV News as a “bonding experience.” That is, until they were stopped by a policeman and told to put on their shirts. When they refused, he informed them there had been complaints. The Mohamed sisters responded by lodging a complaint with the police department. “We’re all feminists and we’re already aware of our rights,” Alysha told the National Post.
In Ontario, women do have the right to go topless in public, ever since Guelph University student Gwen Jacobs famously strolled home semi-naked in July 1991. But this isn’t just a local matter. In Tameera’s words, “it might seem like it’s just toplessness and it might seem like it’s one law or one incident, but all of these issues are connected. If women cannot go topless in public, if we are so against the desexualization of women’s breasts, then we cannot solve problems like street harassment and sexual assault and all of these things that are connected to the idea that women’s bodies belong to men.”
If we follow this strange logic, then it’s not just boobs women should be baring: we should all walk stark naked down the street, because other body parts get sexually assaulted as well. And what about men? They can be sexually abused, too. Would it be better if they also let it all hang out? Why stop at the Free the Nipple campaign, when we can Free Willy as well?
The reason is that there is no proof that exposing one’s private parts reduces sex crimes, or leads to greater equality. In Swaziland, for example, female virgins dance topless hoping to “catch the king’s eye” as prospective brides, of whom he already has a dozen. (We have yet to hear a report of women achieving the corresponding “right” to have a dozen husbands).
Countries with a greater acceptance of female toplessness, such as France, are actually witnessing a reversal of the trend. In a nation famous for its topless beaches, only two per cent of French women under the age of 35 report that they now sunbathe semi-nude. They cite not only fear of skin cancer, but also “ending up topless on your own Facebook wall.” They also lament the use of women’s bare breasts as a political statement, by groups such as Femen, and the “popporn” culture of American performers such as Miley Cyrus — further proof that more exposure doesn’t equal less sexualization.
Instead, it threatens to create a whole new level of appearance anxiety, ironically about the body parts that are currently easiest to love with the addition of clothes. Whether one’s breasts are saggy, uneven, small or big, the right bra or swimwear can make them look just like one wants them to. That’s not the case if they are left to roam free, where nothing short of surgery would do the job — something most feminists would no doubt frown upon.
As for the double standard, whereby men’s bare chests raise far fewer eyebrows than women’s, when men are able to breastfeed, then we can truly say their boobs are the same as women’s. Until then, they are not. And if one thinks both genders’ breasts are worthy of display, there are nude beaches and other places one can go au naturel. It’s about context: just as most men wouldn’t wear a Speedo to a black tie event, most women also say they wouldn’t walk topless downtown, even if they have the right to do so.
In short, bare boobs will not make a better world. Sorry to break it to the sisters, but their cause is a bust.
Toplessness threatens to create a whole new level of appearance anxiety, ironically about the body parts that are currently easiest to love with the addition of clothes