So…what do we do when it rains? Sometimes we brave the elements and get lucky; sometimes we brave the elements and get soaked. And sometimes we duck into our favorite spa for a an hour of sauna and massage in the hopes that it’ll rain itself out. Which, yesterday, it did.
But the ominous portents of rain meant a bunch of people cancelled (wimps!), leaving just one of us behind the camera and one in front. Oh, brave, brave one in front! Bearing the standard for the rest of us. Was it a little bit terrifying? Yes. But also exhilarating. Any day that contains a full-body massage and a one of Tom Colicchio’s delicious cinnamon brioche buns eaten bare-breasted on the grass in the heart of midtown Manhattan is a good day indeed.
The man enjoying his lunch seems rather surprised to be included in the photo. Should consider it s privilege.
Random thought. Consider participating as a group in next year’s Mermaid Parade on Coney Island, as a reminder that mermaids predate by a few hundred years the Disney definition of what a mermaid should look like, i.e., covered in clam shell bras.
Most participants wear halters or pasties, some out of preference I’m sure, but others I would bet because they think the law says they must.
Several of us have done the Mermaid Parade in past years; going as a group, though, is an interesting idea.
What is your group’s intention in having this blog, and your meetings, be so photo-heavy? I’m sure they garner a lot of attention, but it seems superfluous to the ideals you seem to be advocating.
Our meetings aren’t photo-heavy – we might be out in the park for three hours and out of all that time might spend a few minutes here and there snapping photos. As for the blog being photo-heavy, our goal is to normalize this activity – to show the world that women in New York not only can but actually do go shirtless in public, just like men, and do so with pleasure and pride, and without repercussion or negative reaction or bad consequence. One photo of one woman or a few, in one location on one day, doesn’t do that. You have to show that it’s going on all over town, at different times, by all sorts of people, in rain or shine, in parks or on the street, to make it clear that this really is a normal thing to do, an okay thing to do, and nothing to be furtive about or ashamed of. It’s not superfluous at all. If a picture is worth a thousand words, our few dozen pictures illustrating our point should have the impact of a good, long treatise.
So, apparently the word “co-ed” refers, via metonymy, to those humans who, in the 1950s and thereabouts, arrived at male-centered institutions under the rubric of “gender co-education;” in other words, it refers to women… the word “gender” (and the notion that men are gendered) is lopped off of the concept, or forgotten … in the same way that anything to do with gender or sex is marked as feminine, so that masculinity remains unmarked and universal. “Making reading sexy” requires us to “make gender and sexuality about women.” Is that the message?
But of course this isn’t limited to 1950s pulp culture, because we’re still in that era; “co-ed” still means “college girl.” The supposedly general notion of sexuality or erotic empowerment is still represented (not only in advertisements, but in college educational event promotions, in psychology textbooks, etc.) with images of lipstick, fishnet stockings, lace, or even just the archetypal feminine silhouette. Under this regime, do women signify the sexual, unless they either cease to be women or cease to be signs?
So I was just thinking there’s a missed opportunity here. An opportunity missed by countless members of the so-called third wave feminist [sic] movement … whose breasts are, well, awesome, really… but whose capacity to recognize men as sexual (or “co-educational”) objects is apparently abysmal.
Methinks someone has spent too much time in the ivory tower, weaving curtains of language to block his view of the world outside.
We call ourselves “co-ed” because we are a co-ed group–we have male members as well as female. Not as many, and they tend to prefer not showing up on camera, but if you poke through our posts you’ll spot a few, and if you ever see us in the great outdoors you’ll see them for sure. Sometimes they’re the signficant others of some of our female participants, sometimes they’re just friends or friends of friends, once in a while they’ve been people we don’t know but who sounded interesting, so we invited them to come along. But they’re male, and that makes us co-ed.
And believe me, while some of us prefer women, plenty of us do “recognize men as sexual objects.” But our get-togethers have nothing to do with sex, or with recognizing anyone as an object, sexual or otherwise. They’re about physical comfort and equal rights and a pleasant afternoon outdoors in the sun. It’s bizarre how many men can look at a couple of women lying around reading books and think there’s something sexual about it just because their breasts aren’t covered.
Hey, I am down for the cause and I want to join! Where do you guys usually go?
Thanks, Tisha. We’ve met everywhere from Central Park and Bryant Park and Madison Square Park to the Battery Park Esplanade and the tables outside the Flatiron Building. If you’re interested in coming to one of our events, just send a note to toplesspulpfiction@gmail.com.