Keeping abreast of National Go Topless Day

August 23, 2010

If you didn’t know, Sunday was National Go Topless Day, what organizers called a nationwide protest in honor of gender equal rights.

Rallies were held in nine different U.S. cities, including Miami Beach, Austin, San Francisco, and Venice Beach. No arrests have been reported.

Organizers argue for constitutional equality between men and women on being topless in public. “Currently, women who dare to be topless in public in the US are repeatedly being arrested, fined, humiliated, criminalized,” claims the Go Topless web site.

Protesters (do they march in pairs?) avoid being arrested by covering their nipples with latex nipple covers (We’re not making that up). Most local indecency laws demand that nipples be covered.

At the Venice Beach rally, men covered their chests with bras or bikini tops to comply with gender equal rights.

“We will force men to legally cover up if women can’t go bare,” said Nadine Gary, Raelian Priestess and President of Gotopless.org.

Gary criticized cities such as Ashland, Ore., Asbury, N.J., and others that have recently passed ordinances against women’s right to go topless, or that arrest women for doing so when local laws don’t even warrant this action (i.e., Madison, Wis.). “U.S. cities and states not recognizing women’s topless rights must be relentlessly sued to make them conform with gender equality,” Gary said.