Men Wear Bras So Women Can Go Topless

David Moye Contributor
From: http://www.aolnews.com/
AOL News

(Aug. 19) -- Gay marriage is a hot issue right now, but it's not as titillating as another battle for equality: the right for women to go topless in public.

That right is a fundamental one, according to the folks behind Go Topless, an organization dedicated to the belief that in order for America to be a truly equal society, women should be able to bare their breasts without fear of being arrested.

Go Topless has been around since 2007, and its big push is Go Topless Day, an annual event held on the Sunday closest to Aug. 26, which is Women's Equality Day, the anniversary of the day women were given the right to vote.

Mark Ralston, AFP / Getty Images

Protesters prepare to march during National Go Topless Day" to honor Women's Equality Day at Venice Beach in Los Angeles on Aug. 23, 2009.

Women in nine U.S. cities -- Seattle, New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, Honolulu, San Francisco and Austin, Texas -- will gather in public spots on Aug. 22 to put the hot-button issue front and center by wearing little more than strategically placed stickers.

In addition, male supporters of the cause will show their support by wearing bras and bikinis.

"It's a matter of fairness," Go Topless director Nadine Gary said. "We want equal topless rights for all or none."

Gary believes that the right for women to go topless should be guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. "The Supreme Court won't stop us," she added

Although other countries, such as Gary's country of origin, France, tolerate topless women, she wants it to be in the legal books so there is no wiggle room.

"Some states, like New York, are supposedly 'top-free,' but in 2005 Phoenix Feeley was arrested for going topless," Gary said. "She later won $29,000 for wrongful arrest."

Note: Women in this video are wearing nipple covers that look like actual nipples.

Gary admits that it's one thing for the laws to be changed to reflect a woman's right to choose to go topless, but it will be harder to get women to actually do it.

"There is a puritanism here that will have an effect," she said. "But it's the same as it was 40 years ago in France. The problem will be lifted when women see other women doing it."

Gary is aware that America has a lot of "body-conscious" women who may not want to go topless, but the point, she says, isn't to make all women bare their breasts, but to make the option legal.

Meanwhile, Gary is getting support from, not surprisingly, men.

"Guys are great," she said. "They understand this issue, and we get lots of cooperation from males."

One of those is Larry Abdulla, a Chicago-based dentist who, at 63, is putting his support on the line by wearing a red bikini at the Chicago rally.

"This is much more than wanting women to go topless," he insisted to AOL News. "It's about equal rights. Why is it OK for men to be topless but not women?

"It's terrible. A woman breastfeeding her baby in public gets hassled just because people are afraid of how some guys might react. Other guys get excited by seeing legs or belly buttons. Do you ban those too? A transsexual who may have beautiful breasts can get away with going topless if he still has a penis."

Mark Ralston, AFP / Getty Images

A male protester wears a bikini top as he prepares to march during National Go Topless Day to honor Women's Equality Day at Venice Beach in Los Angeles on Aug. 23, 2009. The annual protest is held in several U.S. cities to promote the idea that women have the same constitutional right to be bare-chested in public places as men.

Although Go Topless is focused on the laws in the U.S., its roots are, well, extraterrestrial in origin.

Both Gary and Abdulla are members of the Raelian religion, which believes that humans were created by advanced scientists known as the Elohim. The group is best known for its close ties to Clonaid, a human cloning company that claimed in 2002 to have created the first cloned human baby.

They say their beliefs in ETs are inspiring them to fight to make the right to bare breasts as fundamental as the right to bear arms.

"All life on Earth is created by advanced scientists," Abdulla said. "We have no reason to be shy about our bodies. They are works of art."

Of course, art is in the eye of the beholder, and Gary admits that some guys who attend a Go Topless rally initially act like boobs.

"Some of them take pictures at first, but then they get used to seeing women's bodies and return to normal within an hour," she said.

In France, a New Generation of Women Says Non to Nude Sunbathing

By Bruce Crumley / Paris

A woman sunbathes on the beach during the 62nd International Cannes Film Festival in May 2009

Kristian Dowling / Getty

For decades, the French have relished any opportunity to mock Americans for their supposed childish Yankee puritanism when it comes to matters of sex. These days, though, France is experiencing its own blush of youthful prudishness as an entire generation of younger French women says "Non, merci," to the summer tradition of topless sunbathing.

Since France's summer vacation season kicked off in early July, the French press has repeatedly sounded the alarm over the shrinking number of topless women on the nation's beaches. As eagle-eyed reporters have made quite clear, the prevailing trend among sun-loving women these days is to use both pieces of their bikini. Le Monokini, C'est Fini! , shouted Le Parisien in its report from a Mediterranean beach. "Nude Breasts Are Less Trendy" concurred free daily Metro France. "The practice has become common, and therefore less compelling as a fashion," says sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann. "When the local baker takes off her top despite her 60-year age and sagging breasts, the gesture loses its social distinction as one of youthful beauty." Some note that the return to more modest costumes is in part a response to rising concerns about skin cancer. (Read "In France, a Government-Led Revolution in Entrepreneurship.")

But the trend is also part of a wider social movement by younger French women who are shunning the less-inhibited habits of previous generations. If burning bras and going topless were the ways French women of the 1970s and '80s demonstrated their freedom, their daughters and grand-daughters seem less comfortable with exposed flesh. "The values of our time are more conservative, traditional and familial," says Kaufmann.

A survey titled "Women and Nudity" by polling agency Ifop captures the mood. It found that younger French women not only have a problem with nudity — but actually consider themselves prudish. Fully 88% of the women questioned qualified themselves as pudique — a term that can mean anything from "modest" or "prim" to "priggish." And they aren't joking. Though 90% said they get naked with their husband or partner, 59% avoid being nude around their children. Sixty-three percent said they refused to undress around female friends; 22% said they considered a woman in her underwear already naked. (See TIME's France covers.)

With sensitivities like those, it's little wonder the poll found French women had strong opinions about public nakedness. Nearly 50% said they were bothered by total nudity on beaches or naturist camps, and 37% said they were disturbed by publicly exposed breasts or buttocks. Forty-five percent of respondents reported they'd prefer to see a lot less flesh hanging out in full view — male or female.

Those attitudes got even more pronounced with respondents aged 18-24. A quarter of women within that group described themselves as very pudique, and 20% saw any nudity as tantamount to indecency. That, sociologists say, explains the changing scenery on French beaches. Younger women disinclined to baring themselves make up the majority of female sunbathers; those still willing to go topless are usually older French women. (See pictures of sunbathing in France on LIFE.com.)

"There aren't any rules, but, yeah, it's true when you're at the beach and look around, the only topless women anymore are older," says Elodie, 19, as she visited an artificial beach along the Seine known as Paris Plage recently. Elodie pointed out that a municipal fine — and frequently lousy weather — make going topless at Paris Plage a nonstarter. When asked whether she went topless on vacation beaches — and what factors made her decide when she did and didn't — Elodie's reply was as chilly as it was logical. "All those things," she said, "are personal concerns."

The contrast with U.S. practices is hard not to notice. American women visiting France these days have few qualms about going topless. And plenty of young American women are only too happy to playfully flash their wares in exchange for a few beads. In some ways, the puritanical swimsuit now seems to be on the other torso — a new French squeamishness that will doubtless leave some Americans, well, titillated.

Swedish city legalizes topless bathing….at public swimming pools

Sweden’s third largest city has legalized topless bathing…at public swimming pools.

The City of Malmö decision after initially being asked to vote on a motion that would force women to cover up after a feminist group started appearing at pools topless. Instead they voted in an amended version that said that “everybody should wear bathing suits,” leaving the door open for topless bathing as long as the woman was wearing a bottom part of a bikini.

A council spokesman told The Local that “We don’t define what bathing suits men should wear so it doesn’t make much sense to do it for women. And besides, it’s not unusual for men to have large breasts that resemble women’s breasts.”

The leader of the feminist group behind the law said that “It’s a question of equality. I think it’s a problem that women are sexualized in this way. If women are forced to wear a top, shouldn’t men also have to?”