A couple hundred years ago, it was considered scandalous for women to show their ankles. Now, nonprofit GoTopless is advocating “for the right of women to appear bare-chested in public,” while conversely a blogger is sharing why she won’t wear leggings in public and is facing backlash from women who choose to dress less conservatively.
In recent news, according to The Chicago Tribune, a woman attempted to file a “federal lawsuit over the right of women to go topless in Chicago.” The city has since filed a motion to dismiss the suit, saying, “female breasts are considered erogenous in a way that male breasts are not.” I didn’t think that was a statement that lawyers would ever have to make. It seems pretty obvious already.
But in today’s culture, people like to just throw around the word “equality.” Everyone wants to be treated equally. But equal does not necessarily mean the same. The law cannot and should not treat the issue of male and female toplessness in the same manner because male and female top-halves are simply not the same. It doesn’t take much to realize that. Even little kids at a swimming pool can tell that there aren’t going to be any topless women around.
But then you get to the issue of, if the woman wants to be nude in public, why can’t she? It’s her body and her decision. However, public nudity isn’t only a personal decision; it’s a public one. Being nude in public means people who have zero interest in seeing a person naked have to anyway.
Consider nudity in movies: according to the Motion Picture Association of America, sexualized nudity is only permitted in R-rated movies. Whether you like it or not, a woman’s chest is a very sexualized body part and therefore should not appear in movies without ample warning. I know that there is no chance my parents would have ever taken me as a kid to see a movie with even a split second of nudity. It’s considered inappropriate. How would a parent be expected to explain a topless woman walking around in public? There’s no warning and no escape.
Then we go to the other end of the spectrum, where women are striving to be modest and cover themselves more than society requires.
Veronica Partridge, a Christian wife, mom and blogger, wrote a post titled, “Why I Chose To No Longer Wear Leggings,” explaining her personal decision to no longer wear leggings or yoga pants in public unless her shirt is covering her rear-end. For the Harding community, this idea is nothing revolutionary. But people responded to her post with hate, questioning and disgust.
Partridge cited her reasoning for this decision as “when women wear (leggings) it creates a stronger attraction for a man to look at a woman’s body and may cause them to think lustful thoughts.” She also clarified by saying that, although it is partly the responsibility of men not to look, she wants to do her part to help them. She said she was “in no way trying to tell people what they can and cannot wear.”
There is no reason her decision to be modest should evoke such uproar. But individual decisions of modesty are different than those of immodesty because there’s only one of the two that doesn’t require shielding a child’s eyes.
