According to the Portland Press Herald:
About two dozen women took a walk down Congress Street topless Saturday, attracting a large crowd as they tried to preach that partial female nudity is not worthy of attracting a crowd.
The point of the march was that a topless woman out in public should attract no more attention than a man walking around without a shirt on, said Ty MacDowell, 20, of Westbrook, who organized Saturday’s event and promoted it on Facebook.
Topless Parade in Portland Maine from Jared Anderson on Vimeo.
It’s interesting that virtually none of the mainstream press coverage of the event showed, unedited, the topless women from the front. Another example of media self-censorship in response to America’s irrational paranoia regarding sex and nudity. While practically everyone worries about how nudity affects children, does it ever occur to anyone that this phobia of the human body might not have a psychologically beneficial impact on children?
There is a Canadian website dedicated to “topfree equal rights“, but they were apparently not involved in this particular event. While it’s certainly a novel concept that women and men should be treated equally, it would be far more interesting and challenging for them to be crusading against laws that make simple nudity a crime.
And if they are really interested in equality of the sexes, perhaps they might want to express a position on the concept of unisex restrooms. There is no place for “separate but equal” as applied to sex anymore than it was permissible as applied to race, right?
