Miley Cyrus explained to Jimmy Kimmel last August that her father would “maybe rather me not have my tits out all the time, but he’d rather me have my tits out and be a good person than have a shirt on and be a bitch.” The Free the Nipple Campaign was inspired by a film by the same title that came out in 2014.
The goal of the film was to remove the taboo surrounding females having the freedom to go topless whenever they please. A year before the film premiered, director Lina Esco was told that her film would not be given a wide release, thus greatly limiting her audience. The Free the Nipple Campaign was born in December of 2013.
Pat O’Connor / Equinox staff
A Republican lawmaker in New Hampshire had warned the court that before making a decision on the “Nipple Bill,” as they call it, the controversy surrounding the topic should be taken into consideration. Russian Today reported that House Bill 1525 was up for debate last month. The bill was filed by Brian Gallagher (Republican Rep.), his reasoning being “…on behalf of moms and dads, grandparents, with young children, that felt as though this kind of behavior in public places that all people are entitled to share is not the direction that the live-free-or-die state wants to embrace.”
The reason women’s nipples have been censored is because our society has sexualized breasts. Both women and men share the same breast anatomy.
I do not understand why our society has to be so afraid of the female breast. Part of the reasoning may be due to the fact that people seem to associate breasts with pornography. Women’s bodies are being sexualized all the time. This is not fair.
Breasts are part of the human body for both sexes. The fact that men are free to walk around shirtless while women cannot do so without being judged is a form of gender discrimination.
If a woman wants to be topless, let her be topless. I believe there are far greater issues that we should be focused on today, like the fact that we seem to have a mass shooting on a weekly basis. If a woman wants to breast-feed her baby in public, let her do so.
That woman is not hurting you by doing so in anyway. It’s not as if someone has forced you to watch her! Let women feed their babies where they please.
Our society should not be able to say that a woman on a billboard looking “sexy” for an advertisement is okay, but then turn around and say that the same woman cannot breast-feed her baby in public.
The double standard of this issue needs to end. Society should not be able to pick and choose when they want to see breasts. Women have been giving birth and breast-feeding their babies since the beginning of time. This is nothing new.
Lizzie Zelenka can be contacted at lzelenka@kscequinox.com
EDITORS NOTE:
According to the Union Leader, the “nipple bill” that was proposed in NH to prohibit women from sun-bathing topless on state beaches received no support in a House committee on Feb. 23.
The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee voted 18-0 to recommend the full House kill HB 1525 when it votes later this month.
