Letters to the Editor
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They have my, er, support
At least, in the abstract. But I think they're being a bit silly, really. They want to take off their shirts at soccer games? That is the last place you'd catch me topless. And what exactly is the point, anyway? Is wearing a shirt really that hard?
My town actually allows public nudity, and I have no problem with that. It is being re-thought in the downtown shopping areas lately, but people swim nude in the swimming holes outside of downtown, and no one cares. A swimming hole is a perfectly natural place to skinny dip. A soccer game? Well, if you want to, it's OK with me, but I wouldn't do it myself.
Some women might have liberated themselves from the idea that their breasts are sexual, but I'm not one of them. I don't *want* to be liberated in that way. I like to skinny dip with my family, but at the next sporting event I attend, I'll be keeping my burqa - I mean bra - wrapped firmly around me.
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Only a pun?
"Bara bröst" seems to me to translate correctly both as "Bare Breast[s]" and as "[It's] Only Breasts."
It's a nice pun, I think, and well conveys the movement's position.
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and if they're moms?
I'm just wondering how the community at large would react to nursing moms in a topless world.
Personally, I'm ambivalent to the idea of bare-breasted women as a norm. I see too much potential for increased harassment, especially in the US. And personally, I like a little mystery (and a little underwire) in my wardrobe.
But I applaud the idea of "normalizing" the bared breast. And I think the more the public sees breasts just, er, "hanging out," the less freaked out the public would be by a mom nursing in public. (Since feeding a baby is why women have breasts in the first place.)
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Maybe, Juliebird
I think have I told this story before, but a friend and I and our three toddlers went swimming once; in the locker room afterward, we were all trying to change from wet bathing suits into dry clothes (I know you have kids, so you understand how long this can take). While we were doing that, a woman was standing nude nearby, doing her hair, applying powder to private places, re-working her mascara, etc. - all before she started getting her clothes on. My half-dressed friend's naked toddler wanted to nurse when he saw her breasts, and she let him, whereupon the woman in the corner came and admonished her to cover up while she "did THAT"!
This story - along with the fact that people are uncomfortable with nursing even when there is ZERO skin showing - suggests to me that nursing is its own separate taboo. It really has little to do with showing breasts.
Still, I agree that any effort to make breasts into "just breasts" can't be bad for nursing moms.
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Disappointed in Broadsheet for once
I am surprised at Broadsheet. When the weather is very hot, some women will want the right to take off their shirts. All men enjoy that right, even those fatso guys with the breasts.
Women don't have that right in most places, and they should. I understand the views about modesty, but I am frankly surprised to see such a weak support of a woman's right.
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OMG!
Will someone please think of the children!!!
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This happens to be a near perfect example
of a case where women are more than glad to trash and blame men, as if men do not want women walking around topless (!!), while in reality, it is the WOMEN who are ambivalent about all those bouncing boobies UPSTAGING THEIR OWN CLEAVAGE.
Therefore, toplessness remains outlawed in many places. If it was up to men, public nakedness would be a SACRAMENT.
But the old wives and the older cat women scoff at these things.
The men dutifully set in place the law.
And the women get to bash men for having made the law their older sisters wanted.
Talk about a CATCH 22.
This is ALSO a microcosm of how a LOT of law is passed in the USA and how most men (except possibly the wealthy and CEO types) do NOT have it better than average women, as women constantly insist.
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Boobers
I certainly wouldn't mind bare breasts, although I don't really live in a locale I see this happening much. The crack vials and cold weather probably discourage stripping it all off for a lie down on a towel.
But tell me WHY we want to desexualize the breast? I see references to it, but not much thought as to what the POINT is. Generally speaking, breasts, particularly in primates are regarded as important secondary sexual characteristics, and they play a part in the reproductive process(to biology teacher it up). They are physically changed due ot ovulation and sexual arousal. They pretty clearly play a role in human sexual behaviour.
Methinks you are making presumptions regarding what is best whithout first considering whether it even makes sense.
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Male breasts are sexualized...
the spokeswoman for Bara Brost who wants to make the topless female as desexualized as a topless male forgets that the topless male is sexualized.
Now there's arguably a different power dynamic in the topless male - in that an overtly sexual male need not fear harrasment in the ame way a woman might encounter, and there's also the fact that due to societal hierarchies that even unatttractive and unfir topless males will catch less hell than their female counterparts - but the sexual nature of the male is inherent in his toplessness.
In short - good or bad - the male has an easier time being half naked than a woman - but he's still naked.
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A Good Reason Not to Do This at Football/Soccer Matches
Even allowing for differences between the US and Europeans...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/sports/football/20fans.html?ref=sports
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Leave your shirt on if you want
But women should have the legal right to bare their breasts without being arrested for indecent exposure. The double standard is extremely sexist and offensive -- men can't control themselves around our breasts, so the law requires that we cover them up? Meanwhile, men's chests are sexualized, but women are expected to control themselves.
If we had the legal right in the U.S., I don't think I would ever bare my breasts in public. I imagine most women would leave their shirts on in public. But that doesn't change the fact that the law is wrong. The state should not be able to arrest us for showing our breasts, while men take off their own shirts freely.