Free the Nipple for Go Topless Day

If you’re a cisman, you’ve most likely never had to stop and think about showing your nipples; your nipples are allowed in society by default. But if you’re a woman or a trans person with breasts, you've probably been taught by now that your nipples are indecent, banned, or even outlawed in some places and that other people will have a lot to say about them. Go Topless Day is celebrated each August and is one day during the year when people in cities across the world let their nipples be free in order to challenge the double standards and stand up for the right of all women and trans people to be bare chested in public.

Go Topless Day is not about just one day, and it's not just about the nipple, it's a never ending battle to free all bodies from censorship both on- and off-line. If men are allowed to show their nipples, we should all be free to show them whenever and wherever we want. This is a year round fight for the right to control our own bodies!

Why was Go Topless Day started?

The annual event, which is celebrated on the Sunday closest to Women’s Equality Day — the day women were given the right to vote on August 26, 1920 — was launched in 2007 when activist Phoenix Feeley won a lawsuit against New York City after she was wrongfully arrested for going bare-chested in public.

What is Free the Nipple?

Free The Nipple is a global campaign group that protests against the sexualisation of female and trans bodies, and draws attention to the oppressive double standards that only allow cismen to go topless in public. Go Topless Day may be celebrated once a year, but Free the Nipple is a constant movement that challenges the way we think about bodies. The movement was inspired by a 2012 documentary film which followed a group of women attempting to shed light on the issue.

Free the Nipple on Social Media

By now, you will probably be aware of social media’s draconian rules when it comes to policing any bodies that are not cismen. Women’s bodies are routinely banned and censored with moderators removing “offensive” images of women’s nipples, whilst men’s nipples are allowed to remain. What does that tell users? Why are our nipples viewed as “obscene” but cismen’s are not?

If women's bodies are censored on Instagram there is no doubt that we will be censored in offline life too. When drawings of vaginas are removed, we learn that we should be ashamed of our bodies. When female nipples are censored but male nipples are not, there is an assumption that we must police our own bodies to ensure we do not arouse men.

To highlight the hypocrisy of social media’s rules surrounding nipples, users have started cutting and pasting an image of male nipples and placing them over their own, therefore making their topless shots technically “safe for Instagram”.

The censorship of female nipples boils down to the fact that our bodies are seen only as sexual objects and the laws are made to stop women from arousing men, instead of making men accountable for their actions when aroused.

How can I get involved?

Talk about the free the nipple campaign, post your own topless photo on social media with men’s nipples pasted over the top, get your nipples out more often in public! We need to de-stigmatise the female nipple and stop seeing them as a sexual accessory - get them out whenever you feel like it and make them more normal. And cismen, remember next time you’re taking your shirt off, that you are privileged and able to do something that other people with the same nipples as you are not.