Over several months last year, the tireless and wonderful Deborah Acosta — crack reporter for the New York Times — met with us, interviewed us, interviewed other people about us, and generally dug into the story of gender equality, attempts to regulate female bodies, and the Freeing of the Nipple. The result is today’s wonderful video essay on the topic, which you can see here.
We salute the Times for covering the story at all, and for doing so bravely: unlike most media outlets that have reported on us, they didn’t blur our breasts or edit around them or otherwise censor us. They simply presented us as we are. Hats off to them — and shirts too. 🙂
good things happen to naked people.
I hope the actual interviews AND the people who read/see this reporting will generate more good outcomes for all of us.
Huzzah!
Congratulations !!!
I admire you guys, because you believe in yourselves and you don’t let anybody stand in your way. Plus you have a lot of good clean fun.
Peter V.
Couldn’t read it without subscribing to NYT. Is there a way around that?
You should be able to watch the video without subscribing. We aren’t subscribers and it worked for us. In a pinch, search on Google for “Free the Nipple New York Times” and click on the link that comes up. That seems to be a way to get around whatever subscription requirement they have.
The NYT offers non-subscribers a certain number of articles free. So anyone can access the article and video…unless you’ve already over-used your quota.
EXCELLENT. Well done ladies, and an excellent report on a pertinent issue.
It’s always amazed me how open mouthed, but close minded people can be
about others rights. We’re not expecting or demanding they participate…
We’re JUST asking they ACCEPT OTHERS CHOICES, to HAVE THE CHOICE.
Namaste’, Ladies! Rand Lyons, a Naturist in Phoenix, Arizona
Great report! I was looking forward to it since you mentioned in your previous posts.
Glad to hear they aren’t blurring out physical traits of your otherwise lovely bodies.
All that censoring always just made me curious (and others uncomfortable with their own bodies from what I understand).
Wonderful….
Way to get the word out!
New York, New York it’s a wonderful town
The Bronx is up and bras are down!
I suspect my iPad was not co-operating because I heard the report, but there was no video, just the single picture with a voiceover.
Many interesting issues which I don’t know if you’d be able to answer:
1. The report suggests you are a subset of the free the nipple movement. My own understanding was that you pre-date it, and while you both may be supportive of each other, neither is subsumed within the other. Am I right?
2. The idea that the natural function of breasts is the production of milk is absolutely correct, of course. Many biologists and anthropologists have, however, noted that women’s breasts (as opposed to those of other mammals) are always swollen, suggesting they have evolved with a sexual selection function. Now of course we might believe that, even in that case, someone sexualised them to begin with. But if they’re part of our morphology, uniquely, and therefore part of our evolved psyche, do we really believe we can “train” that sexual idea out of society?
3. The report seemed to mention some women in Times Square charging for photographs/selfies with them topless. Doesn’t this undermine the desexualisation mission by actually taking commercial advantage of the sexualisation of the woman’s nipples?
I think you guys are fantastic, because you’re cool, calm and determined about what you want to achieve, and have a sense of humour withal. I just wondered if any of these things I mentioned trouble you, or cause you to think, as I do, that there are complications there?
All the best!
1. You are right. We are not part of the formal “Free the Nipple” movement (if there even is a formal “Free the Nipple” movement, as opposed to just some people who use that hashtag a lot, and one who made a movie with that title), and I believe we did start our activities before the phrase originated. But we share a common outlook with the people who coined the phrase, obviously, and common goals.
2. Some of our members are Ph.D. biologists, but I am not one of them myself, so I can’t comment on the science of it. But we do believe that people can, over time, get over the habit of thinking of women’s breasts as predominantly sexual and thus scandalous or immoral to display. And there is some evidence for this belief. In some other parts of the world, the sight of women going topless on a beach or in a park is nothing out of the ordinary and not seen as any sort of sexual provocation. In our own part of the world it used to be thought that a man appearing topless on a beach (or in a movie, etc.) was scandalous and provocative, and that’s clearly no longer the case. If people can get used to seeing men’s bare chests without being driven into a sexual frenzy, they can get used to seeing women’s bare chests, too.
3. Women are free to go topless anywhere in New York that men are. There is a man who’s been posing shirtless in Times Square for tips for more than a decade — the so-called “Naked Cowboy” — and no one criticizes him for sexualizing the male body or exploiting it commercially. Freedom and equality for women means freedom and equality to do the full range of things that men do. This includes casual, non-sexual, non-commercial nudity and it includes the sort of thing the Naked Cowboy does to earn a living.
Ta for those replies. They make sense.
More power to all of you and, even if (when!) you win the fight, it would be lovely to continue to hear the stories of your adventures.
🙂
I saw the video and I can say that it was a very fair and objective work, without the usual sensationalism or the “need” to debunk the group (or anyone choosing to go/work topfree/barechested), nor even turn you into some kind of freak show. I really like it, and the fact there was no blurring or cropping looks like an interesting sign of change, a little grain of sand in the prudish shores of intolerance, but we all know that grain after grain a mountain is built. On the topic of the selective role in mating of female breast, that idea -I can recall, was presented by Desmond Morris in his book “The Naked Ape”, and it makes some sort of sense when you think of breast as a partially covered portion of the female body, resembling thus, the female bottom, but we have to remember that swollen breast, though common, are not always present and there are lots of sizes and shapes. I can say that large/saggy breast are more an adaptation for a better baby-feed position under certain circumstances. Anyway, I hope future media notes and press worksa to be in the same lane.
Hey, congratulations! The fact that the NYT showed breasts is sort of a victory in itself, no?
Congratulations! And Thumbs Up!
Great to see, and hear, you on video. I know there’ve been short clips in the past, but this is something else. Can we have more of it please? You might need to get Deborah Acosta to join you, but from the tone of the video it shouldn’t be difficult.
Keep up the good work, I mean, play!
Reblogged this on Look at Both Sides Now and commented:
LABSN Editor’s Note: These women have been on the forefront of gender equality. We have to give them all the support we can.
Based on the names of the people who post comments, it seems like y’all have more males than females who make commentaries. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the majority of y’all’s followers are male, but it seems that way. The main objective of the blog is pretty clear but, does it matter to y’all which sex follows more? Do y’all have a preference?
We welcome all followers. Our principal goal is to empower women (starting with ourselves), but one way you empower women is by educating men. Furthermore, you shouldn’t assume that just because the loudest voices belong to men there aren’t women in the room.
Athena, thank you for your intelligent comments in the NYT! We can always count on you to say the right words! Namaste!
Where and when can I support your next demonstration? Or are those spontaneous events?
Thanks
They’re not spontaneous, but we also don’t announce them in advance to strangers on the Internet. Not even supportive ones.