"Talk to a Therapist"

A woman writes to Ellie complaining about her 25 year-old daughter's penchant for wearing low-cut and see-through tops.

We now have a good relationship and she visits us often. However, she has taken to going braless in flimsy materials where her full breasts and nipples are visible. I wouldn't want any woman coming to my home with my husband there, wearing practically nothing.

Instead of Ellie explaining to "Stressed" that nipples and breasts are nothing to get upset about, she offers this advice:

It's time you stopped being afraid to alienate her ... This may even be her adult way of "testing you," wanting you to care enough to be honest (without putting her down). Try to do it gently and with humour, as in, "You're gorgeous but we're seeing too much of you for parental comfort, so here's a shirt to wear while you're here." Also, be upfront in explaining that the younger girls aren't allowed to dress like that, as they're not as capable as she is of handling any overt reaction.

However, "sexual jealousy" has nothing to do with her clothing. It's related to your insecurities – perhaps about middle age, perhaps about your marriage. If it persists, talk to a therapist about it.

So, Ellie tells her to alienate her daughter by telling her to cover up, teach the younger children that the older daughter dresses like a slut, and to talk to a therapist. All over the sight of female breasts! How about telling the woman to simply stop staring at her daughter's breasts if they're upsetting her so much.

What other culture on earth would allow nipples to potentially break up a family? Complete insanity.

More on Cassidy Nicosia's Topfree Protest

Phillip Bantz of The Keene Sentinel has more details on Cassidy Nicosia and why police prosecutors dropped the indecent exposure and lewdness charges for her topfree protest on August 23.

Last week, police prosecutors D. Chris McLaughlin and Eliezer Rivera decided to drop the charge of indecent exposure and lewdness against Nicosia. The charge was dropped because walking down the street topless does not qualify as a crime under state law, Keene police Lt. Jay U. Duguay said.The law states that a person commits indecent exposure and lewdness if he or she fornicates, exposes genitals or performs any other “act of gross lewdness … likely to cause affront or alarm” in public.“She wasn’t fornicating or exposing genitals — breasts aren’t genitals,” Duguay said. “No one who complained about it said that it was gross lewdness.”While towns and cities may enact ordinances that prohibit women from going topless in public, Keene has no such ordinance, Duguay said.

One of the more interesting aspects of this case is that one of the reasons the charges were dropped has to do with the prosecutors' fears that should the issue have been presented to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, it was a good possibility that the language in the statute could be ruled as being "too broad", and therefore the judges could throw it out completely.

A topfree demonstration in support of Nicosia was scheduled on Wednesday, and it's not clear if that event will proceed. At any rate, even though no court decision come down on this case, it appears that Cassidy's protest has revealed that women's topfreedom is legal in Keene, New Hampshire.

Embracing Imperfection

Columnist Heidi Davoren is sick and tired of how the female breast is depicted in media.

Much pressure is placed on women to bounce back after pregnancy, but the reality is there's very little bounce left. Despite what celebrity mums might tout about how they achieved their amazing shape two weeks after delivery, the fact is it's physically impossible.

It's about time we put a stop to unrealistic expectations and just got real. This week I am embracing imperfection.

The constant parade in magazines, television programs and movies of pumped-up, gravity-defying, perfectly shaped female breasts has set a standard in the mind's eye of some sort of unattainable ideal that has nothing to do with how people really look.

If you are not a nudist or naturist and have gotten your perception of female breasts from Playboy magazine and pornography films, click here to see a gallery of non-sexual normal breasts.

Whenever a woman practices topfreedom, someone always makes the argument that the sight will be somehow harmful to children. In fact, the opposite is true - children are being harmed by being denied access to the sight of normal, nude human bodies.

Kenyon Women Fight for Topfree Equality

A story today in the Kenyon College Collegian newspaper describes how topfree women were kicked out of a "Shock Your Mom" party event on campus, which sparked a protest by a group calling itself "The Women Behind the Boobs", who hung photos of their own naked breasts along an area called Middle Path. A letter was circulated from the protesters, who said, "We love our bodies and we want you to see why! We just wonder why 'common decency' requires us to cover a part of our bodies that not only do men not have to cover, but that is a natural, integral part of ourselves."

According to students interviewed for the story, nudity at the annual event was expected, even though officially prohibited, and that the Campus Department of Safety decided to crack down this year. One student with flowers on her nipples was "grabbed by the shoulders" and told to leave.

According to (student Emma) Lippincott, between 50 and 75 women were involved in the demonstration in some way. While perhaps not all participants saw the demonstration as feminist, Lippincott said that she did. "For me, the true definition of feminism is about egalitarianism between the sexes," she said. "If one gender's chest is viewed as completely sexualized if it's exposed, if it's viewed as pornography when it's just breasts... that's an issue of equality."

Kenyon College is a liberal arts school with 1600 students located in Gambier, Ohio.

UPDATE: The Kenyon Collegian has an editorial supporting the students. It's a little awkwardly written but the point is clear.

We sympathize with the students who felt degraded by the comments they heard when they were asked to leave. Many students in the past have seen Shock Your Momma as an opportunity to expose themselves. These students find liberation in revealing their bodies in a relatively safe environment. When students feel as though they are invited into that environment and then they are pulled away from it, they may feel an understandable amount of shame from putting themselves out into exhilarating and uncomfortable nudity and being pulled away from it by a shaming force that says they are behaving inappropriately.