Relationships June 8, 2017
Ladies, it's time to take your tops off (in the name of feminism).
UPDATE 6/12/2017: Ocean City voted unanimously to pass an emergency ordinance on Saturday that will now prohibit public nudity. The Mayor released a statement saying “This ordinance provides clarity as to the position of the Town of Ocean City, that we will not allow women to be topless on our beach or on any public property within city limits.” The city passed the ordinance despite the fact that the Maryland state constitution forbids gender discrimination. The only way to combat the anti-toplessness city ordinance would be in a court of law (which is already happening in some cities).
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Score one for the topless movement. A beach in Ocean City, Maryland sent out a memo this week declaring it a nipple-friendly zone.
According to a statement from the Ocean City Beach Patrol, if they catch women sunbathing topless they won’t do anything about it. No fines. No arrests. They won’t even tell you to cover up. (Which is awesome since some states do still arrest women for this horrifying act. *sigh*)
“For the 44 years I’ve been guarding the beach in Ocean City, when we’d see people topless on the beach we would just tell them, ‘Hey, you can’t do that,’” explained Captain Butch Arbin to local news outlet WBOC 16. “But since this formal request from someone (Chelsea Covington, a topless advocate from the Eastern Shore), and since the Maryland Attorney General’s Office hasn’t issued their opinion on it, we don’t feel like we can tell people not to sunbathe topless.”
In other words, even though going topless on the beach wasn’t exactly illegal in Maryland, beach patrol treated it as if it were not allowed until a topless advocate, Covington, submitted a formal request on the matter. And voila, now women are free to go topless.
This is actually a really big f**king deal. A year ago I spent months researching topless laws in the United States and found that while some states explicitly forbid women from going topless, most state laws fall into a grey area. And the whole thing becomes even more complicated when you factor in city laws — because your state might say it’s legal, but your city might not.
The project was exhausting and frustrating and in many cases local law enforcement officials weren’t really sure whether or not toplessness was illegal, but erred on the side of caution, meaning if they saw a topless woman they told her to cover up, or even put her in handcuffs.
But that’s not exactly fair considering the law is often times vague and, according to civil rights laws, women have as much right as men to go topless.
And don’t even come at me with, But women’s breasts are sexual and men’s aren’t! Because that argument just doesn’t hold water.
As the Supreme Court of Ohio brilliantly pointed out in a 2007 ruling, just because society has historically sexualized breasts and told women they must keep them covered, does not mean we should stick by that standard.
“The Court of Appeals merely noted that ‘The female breast has traditionally been viewed as an erogenous zone.’ Citing tradition is not good enough, particularly when used to perpetuate the social inferiority of women by removing their option to choose what any man is allowed to choose.” #MicDrop
So ladies of Maryland, please exercise your rights this summer and bronze those boobs.
