Sex.co.nz

Twenty-year-old Ty MacDowell believes that “a woman walking down the street topless should cause no more of a stir than when a man takes off his shirt in public,” according to the Portland Press Herald.

But when she assembled two dozen female friends to march topless down the streets of Portland, Maine on April 3, she quickly found out that American society isn’t as evolved as she thought.

Young men crowded around the marchers, snapping photos and ogling openly.

When the photos taken that day made it onto the web, accompanied by a comment that not all images were suitable for online publication, MacDowell conceded defeat.

“They treated it like porn,” she said.  “It felt like total objectification.”

Well, what did she expect?

The Topfree Equal Rights Association (TERA) is a Canadian organization founded to promote equal rights for breasts.  If men are allowed to bare their breasts (e.g., go shirtless) in public, TERA claims, women should be allowed to do the same.

The organization’s “Statement of Purpose and Principles” goes on to state that:

”Women's breasts are just fine, and in no way indecent, obscene, dangerous, or some other version of bad, any more than men's are.”

What This Really Means

Of course women’s breasts are “just fine”!  As Ty MacDowell found, most men will applaud the decision of women to go topless – as long as they don’t get punished for looking.

And that’s what organizations like TERA fail to acknowledge.

Their problem isn't not just with people who think breasts should be covered; it's also with the entire male population who can't help drooling over the sight of a woman's breasts.

If women like MacDowell want "equal rights" to go topless, then they have to accept that going without a top will get them looked at.

Men understand this intuitively.  If a man decides to take off his shirt in public, he understands that other people will look.  He accepts the fact that women may ogle him.  If he doesn’t want anyone’s attention to be directed to his body, he shouldn’t take off his shirt in the first place.

Similarly, women who decide to go topless must also accept the fact that they will be looked at.  Just as shirtless men can’t complain when they get wolf whistles, so topless women shouldn’t complain when they get appreciative glances.

What TERA and MacDowell seem to want is for women’s breasts to be de-sexualized, removed of any sexual connotations whatsoever.  That’s just not going to happen.

But what CAN happen is that women can stop caring so much about who looks at them and why.

Can women accept the male gaze as a price for their “right” to go topless?

We’d like to believe so.

After all, the female breasts are a thing of beauty.  The more often they see the light of day, the better!

If you want to support the right of women to go topless, visit TERA and find out how you can help.