Here’s a good question: why can’t a woman go topless wherever a man can?
Sorry . . . I’m not buying answers like “Because that is the way it has always been” or “Because they are women.”
Talk about equal rights! The prevalent dress code inequity is motivated by the same mindset that leads some people to kick breastfeeding women off of airplanes. [1] Or am I missing something? Here’s a relevant article on cross-cultural attitudes toward nudity. [2]
I didn’t realize that New York state is one of the very few places in the US where women can legally be top free anywhere that a man can be top free. Photographer Jordan Matter used New York City as the backdrop to a collection of photos he has named “Uncovered.” Here’s how he explains the collection on “The Thinking Blog.” [3]
Challenging this inequity between the sexes is the purpose of my work. There has been a recent shift in America towards a socially conservative philosophy, so right after Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed at the Super Bowl, I started asking women to appear topless in New York City. [Uncovered: Busting Out in the Big Apple] is a collection of photographs featuring bare-breasted women in public around NYC, often presented with interviews exploring the issues of body image and sexuality in America today. The informal and humorous nature of these images celebrates women without sexualizing or objectifying them, while creating the illusion of a tolerant world in which shirtless women go casually about their lives. Uncovered represents just one aspect of what America could look like if we were free of shame and liberated from moral judgment.
“The Thinking Blog” [3] contains various links to “Uncovered.” Here’s Matter’s official site. [4] [Warning to those who are offended or mortified by images of human breasts, including all of you who pummeled the FCC with emails complaining about Janet Jackson: “Uncovered” contains non-sexualized images of human breasts. If you’re looking for sexual images, you’ll be disappointed and you’ll have to surf on over to one of the tens of millions of Internet sites that offer those sorts of images].
I’m sharing this information because I found the Matter’s photos to be both humorous and intellectually challenging.
Print this post [5]
[6]