Letters to the Editor
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western canadians remember.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedomites#Public_protest
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The irony is
that African women probably have a much more positive body self image than do Western women, despite this symbolic weight placed on their bodies.
It would be interesting to dig into the origin of the belief. I have my own theories, but will spare them, at least for now.
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The Yale Women's Crew Showed the Way, in 1976
Here's a link to a story on a film recounting the incident, which was a protest to the Yale Athletic Department about the lack of facilities for women's teams:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F06E1DC153BF931A25750C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
An excerpt:
""The film tells the story of Chris Ernst, a two-time Olympian, who led her rowing team in a protest against Yale's lack of athletic facilities for women.
Ernst and 18 teammates silently marched into Yale's athletic office, read a statement, and stripped to the waist -- exposing the words ''Title IX,'' which had been drawn in blue marker on each woman's back and breasts. A New York Times reporter stood behind the women observing the event; the next day the story appeared in the paper of March 4, 1976, and set off an international reaction. A photograph of the history-making event also ran in The Yale Daily News.
Within an hour of the protest, Yale administrators recognized they had a problem. Within two weeks, the female rowers had new locker rooms. Across the country, educators snapped to attention and began viewing Title IX -- which had become law four years earlier -- as legislation that required compliance."
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The power of the breasts
In the early eleventh century, according to the Saga of the Greenlanders and Erik the Red’s Saga ,Freydis Eiriksdotter (illegitimate daughter of Erik the Red) was among the Vikings who sailed to Vinland (North America). It is Freydis’ father’s saga that tells of her most heroic act: Upon arrival, they were attacked by natives. While the Viking men ducked for cover, a pregnant Freydis took up her sword, bared her breasts, pounded her chest and shrieked a battle cry with such force that the unnerved natives retreated.
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Hmm
Wagner would have liked that one.
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Damn, zzz05 beat me to it
The Doukhobors were a fascinating bunch, communal pacifists from Russia (Tolstoy actually paid most of the cost of getting them to Canada). A splinter group, the Sons of Freedom, resisted government efforts to school their children, end the communal way of life, and force them to register in the census, by taking off all their clothes (human skin, being made by god, is more perfect than man-made clothing anyway) and burning all their possessions (including their houses). It was pretty dramatic, and provided many a Canadian boy with his first picture of naked breasts back in the 20s and then 60s. Didn't work though.
They're still around, though they don't do the nude arson thing anymore.
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Not just Africa
A Russian-Christian immigrant sect called the Doukhobors has held mass nude protests against the Canadian government off and on for the last hundred years or so.
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Prostitutes in Madagascar also protested naked
Had Broadsheet existed back then, it would certainly have covered this story from the 2001/2002 political coup in Madagascar.
From the CNN archives:
"Prostitutes strip naked in protest
Prostitutes in Madagascar stripped naked to demand the lifting of roadblocks set up by supporters of the country's embattled president because it deprived them from clients and money."
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/africa/04/05/prostitutes.madagascar/index.html
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Nudity protests a long standing practice in West Africa
As an anthropologist who works on topics relating to gender in West Africa, I can tell you that women's nudity protests are a long standing practice in that part of the continent. Perhaps the most famous of such protests took place in the colony of Nigeria during November and December 1929. The Ogu Umunwaanyi (Women's War) against the British colonialists mobilized women in tens of thousands, and part of their protest--which wasn't well understood by the British and even by some western-educated African men--was for older women to strip and to threaten men with their powerful, naked bodies. Genital cursing is at the heart of this form of protest. Among Igbo-speaking people in southeastern Nigeria, for instance, a mother can quiet her son in any verbal contest by asking him if he would like to "see where he came from." Women's genitals, and particularly older women's genitals, are thought to be the seat not only of fertility but also of a dangerous reversal of fertility. Married and older women covered their bodies partially to display their wealth (in cloth and ornament) but also to mask and deflect this embodied genital power. A successful nudity protest of recent years in Nigeria took place in 2002, when women from the Ijaw and Efik groups in the Niger Delta used their bare breasts (and the threat of further disrobing) to shame the otherwise shameless ChevronTexaco multinational.
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"African women" not all the same
Um, maybe we could not talk about Africa like it's monolithic, and that the women in it all have the same customs, beliefs, and traditions? 'Cause, they don't.
Mamiwata, I appreciated your contribution, which was about specific people and groups, not the whole damned continent. Jeez.
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it was good to be a shoolkid when the Doukhobors were protesting nude
"Fuzzy Wuzzu was a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
But Fuzzy Wuzzy didn't care
Because he was a Doukhobear"
Great times to have an immature sense of humor. Also good times for editorial cartoonists.