If you didn’t think the Free the Nipple movement was serious before, you will now. Early Sunday, more than 60 cities worldwide participated in International GoTopless Day. Onlookers watched as hundreds of women and men paraded their assets through city streets. The GoTopless Day “BoobMap” shows that everywhere from Manhattan to Hermanus, South Africa bore their breasts in either celebration or protest of censorship laws.
According to the organization’s website, GoTopless Day always falls on the Sunday closest to Women’s Equality Day (Aug. 26). On Aug. 26, 1920, women earned their right to vote. The organization chose the timing of the holiday because, “the right to go topless for women is based on gender equality as their right to vote once was.”
The big turnout for the parades goes to show that women around the world are sick and tired of the negative stigma surrounding female breasts. As Cosmopolitan points out, men can flaunt their shiny six-packs and muscular pecs all over social media and television, but the second a woman’s nipples are displayed, the images are blurred out, censored and many times even deleted. Some think this is an act for our own safety, as a Gothamist blogger reported that most of the NYC GoTopless parade audience was comprised of grimy men with cameras, hounding everyone to get the perfect photo.
Is the visual protest of nipple censorship progressing the fight against gender inequality, or is it just promoting gross behavior from horny men? Not sure. But one thing is for sure: the participants in this parade were brave, and I’m seriously considering ripping off this underwire prison that we call a bra.