Staying Abreast

The other day at the U-District Street Fair a guy came up and asked if I wanted to go topless in a parade at FolkLife. The timing was kind of comical because I had just added a picture to my myspace the day before that read “bare breasts – why are some legal and others illegal?”
It’s one of those things you don’t think about unless you stumble across it online or someone tells you about it. Why are women’s breasts illegal to show in public? Believe it or not, there are even groups of people wanting to ban breastfeeding… in public and private!
The arguments against don’t hold grounds, except some, and those are only true for the short-term.

Breasts are sexual: no they are not. Unless you consider breastfeeding a sexual act. This is indisputable. Breasts are not inherently sexual, they never will be.
Breasts are ugly: this is a matter of opinion. It would also be interesting to know if it is a man or a woman saying this. If this is said by a man, then this is in full contradiction to another argument people make: men will be turned on by bare breasts everywhere. Would you be turned on by something you label “ugly?” If it is a woman who says this, then I wonder whether she has a healthy body image. Breasts are not inherently ugly (nothing is, really, but let’s save that for another time).
Women would go topfree all the time: do men go topfree all the time?
Women don’t want to go topfree anyway: I would say most women in western cultures nowadays would tell you they don’t want to show their breasts, but then I wonder why that is so. I don’t think women were born not wanting to show their breasts. Instead, I believe it is a learned behavior… no really, it’s a phobia. I remember years ago when one day I forgot to put a bra on. I still had a shirt on but when I realized this halfway through the day I was mortified. I felt naked and exposed and dirty somehow. Nowadays I don’t wear bras on principle and I feel nothing wrong with it. I got used to it and I started to understand that there is no good purpose for a bra unless you have extremely heavy and large breasts that hurt without support. Then again, the whole brafree-story is another topic.
There are so many more arguments and I have yet to come across one that really makes me reconsider.

So now I am faced with a decision: do I go? I don’t feel hypocritical saying that the thought makes me really uncomfortable. I know why I feel this way, and that’s why I think I should go. Maybe going with a (female) friend will help.

But ultimately, I must be the change I wish to see in the world, right?