Did you know that showing male nipples in public was illegal in the US until 1936?
That’s right. Leading up into the 20th century, it was absolutely scandalous for men or women to show their upper half in public.
It took years of protests in the ‘30s for anything to change. Dozens of men went to the beach topless and were arrested for it, but eventually, the law was changed to allow male nipples to be legal in New York. Other states soon followed their example.
Nowadays, it’s completely commonplace for men to show their nipples in public, even though 75 years ago, it was a crime.
Sound familiar?
That’s right: What about female nipples?
By the way, when I say “female nipples” or “male nipples,” I really mean the nipples of people who society perceives to be male or female, since a lot of this is based on the perception of someone’s gender rather than their real gender identity or biological sex in the case of intersex people.
Also technically it’s the areola, which is the area around the nipple, that’s the point of contention, not the nipple. But all that’s just too much of a mouthful.
Now, being a woman [Text on the screen: *being a person with boobs] and showing your nipples in public remains illegal in a lot of states, and even in states where being a woman and going topless is completely legal or isn’t explicitly illegal, you can still be arrested and fined for public indecency or other related laws.
Isn’t that ridiculous? That half of the population is welcome to walk around shirtless all they like, but the other half can be arrested for it?
But Riley, female nipples are so sexual. Every time I see one, I just get so sexual.
You know why female nipples are sexualized? Because we sexualize them. You know how we stop sexualizing them? By not sexualizing them anymore.
There are plenty of cultures in the world where women regularly go topless – and yet somehow, society still manages to function just fine.
In the US, men’s nipples were also sexualized until the ‘30s, but I don’t think you would argue that all men should be barred from going topless. In fact, if you lived in the ‘30s, you’d probably be out protesting topless with those men in New York.
And female nipples aren’t even inherently more sexual. Both men and women report feeling sexual pleasure from their nipples during sex – so that argument is gone.
Plus, nipples attached to breasts can literally give life. Breastfeeding is a perfectly natural, safe, healthy thing that is literally feeding a baby, and yet people with breasts can be fined for doing it in public.
They’re feeding a baby, and they’re getting fined! I cannot articulate with words how ridiculous that is. You cannot say that a person feeding their baby is somehow sexual or indecent.
But I think even stronger than our laws are our social taboos. Even if we made female toplessness completely legal in the United States tomorrow, there probably wouldn’t be too many people with boobs running around topless, simply because of the social taboo against it.
Men would make fucked up, sexist comments. People would stare. It probably wouldn’t be a fun experience to be a topless person with boobs.
Regardless, it has happened before with men in the 1930s, and it can happen again. We can change our mindset about female nipples and change our social stigmas. It just requires all of us putting in a little bit of effort to educate ourselves and the people around us.
And this all gets a bit trickier when you remember that not all people identify as male or female, and some people who are assigned male at birth might later identify as female, and vice versa.
For instance, I was assigned male at birth, so my nipples are totally legal. I could show you my nipples right now, and YouTube definitely would not take down my video. [Starts to raise shirt] I won’t show you my nipple, but I could.
However, if I ever chose to have top surgery and then had boobs, it would suddenly become illegal and socially taboo for me to be topless. YouTube would take down any video where I exposed my now “female” nipple, and I could be arrested for public indecency.
And that’s despite the fact that it would be the exact same nipple. The only difference between it being legal or not is if people perceive me as a man or a woman.
That’s absurd! There’s so much double standard.
And the opposite is true as well. If someone is assigned female at birth, then has surgery to remove their breasts and is able to be perceived as male, they could go topless and it would be completely legal despite having the same nipples they had before.
I’ve also heard people make the argument that if people with boobs want the right to show their boobs, then they have to post topless pictures or go outside topless.
Newsflash: You don’t have to go topless to support people with boobs having the choice to go topless.
Because that’s what this is really about: choice. Women, and people who society perceives to be women, should have the right to choose if they want to go topless or not. You can absolutely support that choice without wanting to go topless yourself. It’s similar to how you’re allowed to support the LGBTQIA+ community without being LGBTQIA+ yourself.
Basically, we need to stop nipple policing. We need to legalize female nipples, but we also need to stop sexualizing breasts, and we need to work to change our social taboo around this whole topic. If you support women going topless, but you only support it with some sort of creepy, “Yay, I get to look at boobies now!” mentality, then you’re not helping. Women should have the right to go topless without being sexualized, just like men.
There is actually a campaign going on right now called Free The Nipple, which I’ll link to down in the description, that’s trying to change all of this for the better. Hopefully, 75 years from now, we’ll be looking back on this and thinking about how ridiculous it was that female nipples were ever illegal.
Anyways, that’s all I have for you this week. This video is a part of a series I’m doing for Everyday Feminism, a website dedicated to helping you stand up to and break down everyday oppression. I’ll put links down below where you can find out more about them and see my previous videos in this series. [Note: the links are included within the transcript.]
Thanks so much for watching. I love you all, and I’ll see you next week. Bye!
