Judith Beatrice Bari was an American environmentalist and labor leader, a feminist, an anarchist and the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California in the 1980s and 1990s. She also organized efforts through Earth First! – Industrial Workers of the World Local 1 to bring timber workers and environmentalists together in common cause.
Cynthia Ellen Nixon is an American actress and politician. For her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004), she won the 2004 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She reprised the role in the films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010), as well as the television show And Just Like That... (2021). Her other film credits include Amadeus (1984), James White (2015), and playing Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion (2016).
Indecent exposure is an expression that describes the deliberate public exposure by a person of a portion of their body in a manner contrary to local standards of appropriate behavior. Laws and social attitudes regarding indecent exposure vary significantly in different countries. It ranges from outright prohibition to prohibition of exposure of certain body parts, such as the genital area, buttocks or breasts.
Proposition 215, or the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, is a California law permitting the use of medical cannabis despite marijuana's lack of the normal Food and Drug Administration testing for safety and efficacy. It was enacted, on November 5, 1996, by means of the initiative process, and passed with 5,382,915 (55.6%) votes in favor and 4,301,960 (44.4%) against.
Topfreedom is a cultural and political movement seeking changes in laws to allow women to be topless in public places where men are permitted to be barechested, as a form of gender equality. Specifically, the movement seeks the repeal or overturning of laws which restrict a woman's right not to have her chest covered at all times in public.
The monokini, designed by Rudi Gernreich in 1964, consisting of only a brief, close-fitting bottom and two thin straps, was the first women's topless swimsuit. His revolutionary and controversial design included a bottom that "extended from the midriff to the upper thigh" and was "held up by shoestring laces that make a halter around the neck." Some credit Gernreich's design with initiating, or describe it as a symbol of, the sexual revolution.
A wet T-shirt contest is a competition involving exhibitionism, typically featuring young women contestants at a nightclub, bar, or resort. Wet T-shirt contestants generally wear white or light-colored T-shirts without bras, bikini tops, or other garments beneath. Water is then sprayed or poured onto the participants' chests, causing their T-shirts to turn translucent and cling to their breasts. The comparatively rarer male equivalent is the wet boxer contest, sometimes held at gay bars.
Rita Rudner is an American comedian. Beginning her career as a Broadway dancer, Rudner noticed the lack of female comedians in New York City and turned to stand-up comedy where she has flourished for over three decades. Her performance on a variety of HBO specials and numerous appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, helped establish Rudner as one of the premier comics to emerge from the comedy boom of the 1980s.
Toplessness refers to the state in which a woman's breasts, including her areolas and nipples, are exposed, especially in a public place or in a visual medium. The male equivalent is barechestedness, also commonly called shirtlessness.
Carol Ann Doda was an American topless dancer based in San Francisco, California, who was active from the 1960s through the 1980s. She was the first public topless dancer.
Sarah Jones is an American playwright, actress, and poet.
Nudity is sometimes used as a tactic during a protest to attract media and public attention to a cause, and sometimes promotion of public nudity is itself the objective of a nude protest. The use of the tactic goes back to well published photos of nude protests by svobodniki in Canada in 1903. The tactic has been used by other groups later in the century, especially after the 1960s. Like public nudity in general, the cultural and legal acceptance of nudity as a tactic in protest also varies around the world. Some opponents of any public nudity claim that it is indecent, especially when it can be viewed by children; while others argue that it is a legitimate form of expression covered by the right to free speech.
Nikki Craft is an American radical feminist activist and writer.
Femen is a radical feminist activist group whose goal is to protect women's rights. The organization became internationally known for organizing controversial topless protests against sex tourism, religious institutions, sexism, homophobia, and other social, national, and international topics. Founded in Ukraine, the group is now based in France. Femen describes its ideology as being "sextremism, atheism and feminism".
Go Topless Day is an annual event held in the United States to support the right of women to go topless in public on gender-equality grounds. In states where women have that right topfreedom laws are celebrated, and protests are held in states where topless women are prohibited.
Topfreedom in Canada has largely been an attempt to combat the interpretation of indecency laws that considered a woman's breasts to be indecent, and therefore their exhibition in public an offence. In British Columbia, it is a historical issue dating back to the 1930s and the public protests against materialistic lifestyle held by the radical religious sect of the Freedomites, whose pacifist beliefs led to their exodus from Russia to Canada at the end of the 19th century. The Svobodniki became famous for their public nudity: mostly for their nude marches in public and the acts of arson committed also in the nude.
Olexandra Shevchenko is a member of the Ukrainian radical feminist protest group FEMEN, which regularly demonstrates topless against manifestations of patriarchy, dictatorship, religion, and the sex industry.
Free the Nipple is a topfreedom campaign created in 2012 during pre-production of a 2014 film of the same name. The campaign highlights the general convention of allowing men to appear topless in public while considering it sexual or indecent for women to do the same, and asserts that this difference is an unjust treatment of women. The campaign argues that it should be legally and culturally acceptable for women to bare their nipples in public.
R. v. Gowan is a March 1998 case tried by the Ontario Court of Justice which ruled that, while a woman being topless as form of protest and free speech is legal, her being topless while she engages in a commercial purpose such as prostitution is illegal.
In the United States, states have primary jurisdiction in matters of public morality. The topfreedom movement has claimed success in a few instances in persuading some state and federal courts to overturn some state laws on the basis of sex discrimination or equal protection, arguing that a woman should be free to expose her chest in any context in which a man can expose his. Other successful cases have been on the basis of freedom of expression in protest, or simply that exposure of breasts is not indecent.
