Should Women Be Allowed to Go Topless in Public?

Everyone likes it when women take their tops off (for the right reasons) (as long as they’re perceived as conventionally attractive) (except Piers Morgan). People attracted to women can go, “hey, look, boobs!” and people not attracted to women can go, “all right, there’s a fearless lady, hooray!”
For some reason, though, Western society in general and the United States in particular has yet to normalize female toplessness. That’s what #GoToplessDay and is all about.

Go Topless Day was started by GoTopless.org (NSFW link, if you work with prudes) in 2008 to foster equal toplessness rights. According to their website, toplessness laws in the United states are often ambiguous or outright prohibitive.

From their About page:

“We are a U.S.-based organization founded in 2007 by spiritual leader Rael and we claim that women have the same constitutional right that men have to go bare-chested in public.”

We’re going to ignore GoTopless.org’s origins in a creepy cult for now and just say that their aim is true. As our host RJ Aguiar passionately declaims in the video above, thinking of breasts as exclusively sexual objects is regressive and weird — especially considering that their main purpose is to feed infants, not for people to stare at.

Go Topless Day, August 28th, happens to coincide this year with a massive backlash to France’s equally regressive burkini laws. In case you haven’t been following this story, the burkini is a garment designed to allow Muslim women, who by religious custom must keep their bodies and hair covered, to swim.

Over 30 towns in France, mostly on the Riviera, have banned the swimsuit. (The ban in one town, Villeneuve-Loubet, was recently overturned by France’s highest administrative court — meaning that the bans may be lifted in other towns as well.)

The laws have led to harassment of Muslim women in France. In at least one case, a woman was forced by French police to remove her clothing.

In other words: in the Western world, people are forcing women to cover up and to wear less. Neither of these are okay.

As with most things on the internet, this situation may be best summed up with a .GIF: