If you ever want feel like you’re back
in the dark ages of female equality, look no further than the law books of
certain U.S. states.
In Arizona, a woman can be arrested for
indecent exposure if she exposes the areola or nipple of her breast if someone
else is present.
“Hiking in the forest, in the nude,” is
not a violation of the law in Los Angeles, but a woman who exposes her “private
parts” to another person can be found guilty of a misdemeanor for public
indecency.
Delaware women can be arrested if they
expose their breasts “under circumstances that she knows her conduct will
likely cause affront or alarm.”
Thank goodness Hollywood red carpets, a
place where nipples have been known to make surprise — or planned — visits, is
not in Indiana and Michigan. Both states qualify that “the showing of the
female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple”
will find a woman guilty of a crime.
And, Louisiana specifies that “female
breast nipples in any public place or place open to the public view with the
intent of arousing sexual desire or which appeals to prurient interest or is
patently offensive” can receive three-years of jail time for a first-time
offense and a $2500 fine.
Should you wish to breastfeed your
child there, well, be on the look out.
These are just some of the many
instances of legal gender inequality that compelled Lina Esco to write, direct,
star and produce her new film,
Free
The Nipple, out Friday, December 12. The film is a natural
outgrowth of Esco’s grassroots
#FreeTheNipple
movement, which has garnered support from Miley Cyrus, Lena Dunham, and Rumer
Willis, among other celebrities.
“The first thing a child sees when it
is born, the first thing it connects with, the first thing that nourishes it —
it’s a nipple! It’s a boob!” exclaims Esco when discussing the origins of her
film and movement with Yahoo Health.
The film, billed as a comedy but
perhaps best described as an activist how-to guide, tells the story of a group
of young women who engage in public demonstrations of toplessness to call
attention to the fact that not only do women continue to be arrested for
toplessness despite its being legal in New York, but that women’s bodies are
subjected to different standards and rules than men.
“There are so many laws against women’s
bodies – there are so few laws against men’s bodies,” says Esco. “This isn’t
about the act of going topless – it’s paving the way for real conversation to
happen, for equality.”
Esco’s work to make public
breastfeeding not only legal but comfortable extends beyond the film. This past
summer she created a public service announcement called “Everybody’s Got To
Eat,” which helped result in Facebook changing its terms of use to no longer
ban photos of breastfeeding mothers.
“Why should a mother have to go through
all sorts of weird situations —from going into a bathroom or hiding in a corner
— just to breastfeed a child,” says Esco, “In our society, a mother who wants
to breastfeed in public is already shamed so much. That’s not a great place to
be as a mother who is doing the most basic human act.”
Free The Nipple the film is a prime example of
art-imitating-life-imitating art. It is notable while watching the film that
the first half of the movie contains blurred, censored nipples, while the
second half does not: When they started filming, police threatened to shut down
production — despite female toplessness being legal in New York since 1992 —
because of the possibility of it being misinterpreted as pornography.
This motivated Esco to shoot the
latter part of the movie without permits, stealing shots and making every scene
with public, topless protest an actual public, topless protest.
Today’s #FreeTheNipple movement
isn’t all that dissimilar to the original efforts to allow for nipples to be
seen in public.
Except at that time, it was guys who
wanted to show skin. Yes, up until the mid 1930’s it was illegal to public
flaunt the male nipple in public.
The nipple-stifling swimsuits men we
forced to wear prior to 1936, when it became legal to expose nipples in New
York state. (Photo by Getty Images)
The first protests
occurred on Coney Island in the early 1930’s, where men gathered to fight
for the right to swim and sunbathe in shirtless swim trunks. In 1935, another
group of male protesters got themselves arrested in Atlantic City for hitting
the beach while baring their torsos. In 1936, these men legally gained the
right to show their nipples in public, laying the foundation for existing New
York state laws that allow women to be topless wherever a man is legally
allowed to be.
The difference, however, is that
women can still be charged with public indecency, disturbing the peace, or lewd
behavior in many of these places where toplessness is purportedly legal.
Double-standards about the public
presentation of male and female bodies subsisted even after the initial legal
changes: In 1962, a bikini-clad Marilyn Monroe had to ensure that her navel
remained covered up in the film Something’s Got To Give, and in 1986
seven women were arrested in Rochester, New York for sunbathing topless on a
summer day.
Even Marilyn Monroe has to cover up
in the 1962 film, Something’s Gotta Give.
In 2005, a woman named Phoenix Feeley
is wrongly arrested in New York for going topless despite it being legal there
and is later awarded $29,000 in damages. She was arrested again in 2011 in New
Jersey for sunbathing topless. The state said she was in violation of an
ordinance banning public nudity; Feeley said that toplessness was not the same
as nudity and she should be granted the same rights as men. (New Jersey has no
explicit anti-topless laws on the books.)
She went on a 16-day hunger strike
while in jail for refusing to pay the $816 fine for her crime and was
ultimately released on time served.
In discussing just what it is that
society finds so threatening about nipples, Esco recounted a story about a
man who recently told her that if she was going to be topless, he “couldn’t
help” but look at her breasts as sexual things. She told the man, “Ok and
that’s fine…But what if I’m here topless and having dinner with you for five
hours or something. At some point, aren’t you going to get tired at looking at
my boobs? Aren’t you going to have to look at my face?”
The man admitted that, indeed, if he
was forced to look at breasts for an extended period of time, he would be able
to see the person behind them, and not just the idea of sex.
“Maybe that’s what America needs,”
Esco sighs, “A big flash of boobies so they can just get over it.”
(Source from: Yahoo; #FreeTheNipple activists marching in New York City in an outtake from the movie, Free The Nipple. (Image courtesy of Free The Nipple)