It's legal for women to walk around topless in NYC. Could that law come to Athens?
A movement popularized in New York City has taken to the streets to show the discriminatory behaviors put in place on social media and in society at large.
The “Free The Nipple” campaign, which is an equality movement, which, in part, aims to desexualize women’s breasts, has grown more prevalent in mainstream culture largely due to celebrities jumping on the bandwagon, including Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne and Chelsea Handler.
However, there are a few more steps the movement must undergo before it spreads enough to be prominent in the Athens community, said Jieli Li, a professor of sociology at Ohio University.
“Sometimes you need some kind of radical action to catch the world’s attention,” Li said. “Personally I think that any movement, if they want to succeed, they have to make their ideology clear. Their goal must be reasonable.”
An uncovered female breast is defined as “nudity” according to the Ohio Revised Code.
Li said New York City is a “breeding ground” for change, which is why the movement has taken a strong hold there. He likened the undertaking to that of the gay rights movement, which 20 years ago, had no support and will now be contested at the national level.
Li cautioned that Free The Nipple advocates should tread carefully as the American public might view them as radical feminists instead of civil rights activists.
The movement is also prominent on social media. Matt Howard, a junior studying strategic communication, said he thought social media could bring the campaign here quickly because of the widespread publicity.
Howard said he thought other students would be receptive to the idea.
“I would think a lot of people would be OK with it,” he said. “This is also a new generation of people who are more open-minded.”
But there are some obstacles to the movement spreading online. Handler has spoken out against Instagram, a social network that does not allow women to post images containing their nipples. However, on the same network, males are free to post the exact same pictures.
One popular app new to campus this year, Unseen, follows suit and does not allow full nudity pictures of females.
The biggest reason Unseen does not allow topless women on the general feed is due to Apple App Store restrictions, said Alex North, director of communication at Unseen, Inc. The Apple Store serves those with Apple products.
Although Google Play, the service that provides mobile applications to Android users, does not have the same stipulations as Apple, North said for the sake of consistency, Unseen users on both types of devices are not able to post pictures of topless women.
“The nature of our app is that we just want people to open their phone and scroll through the feeds and not be offended,” North said. “The idea that female nipples are offensive is not our determination, it's society’s.”
Unseen has a messaging component to its app that allows users to privately chat with each other. The same nudity terms that affect the open-forum style feed do not hold true in this service.
“We're happy that people are sending nudes to each other via direct message,” North said.
As far as the double standards about nipples go, North said societal burdens are to blame. “Female nipples are just sexualized in a way that male nipples aren't,” she said. “We're not trying to replicate that ... but it's not our call, it's society’s.”
“In order to be something that the public can consume, we have to adhere to them,” North said.
@w_gibbs
wg868213@ohio.edu
