Fortunately for me it was a young female who publicly raised an issue of gender equality, otherwise, had I brought it up, I’d be regarded —rightly or wrongly — as a middle-aged wannabe ogler.
Twenty-something Anni Ma was the face of a rally at UCSD Wednesday that involved about 100 students, male and female, going topless.
Gasp!
Ma’s stated purpose was to draw attention to the unfair treatment women receive when it comes to the right to bare arms and chests.
If you’re a woman and you walk down the street topless on any given day chances are men will leer, make some sort of ridiculous remark and maybe even proposition you. Walk long enough and chances are the police would eventually catch up with you and threaten a citation for indecent exposure.
If you’re a man you can walk merrily along flashing your breasts, immune to any sort of harassment, unwanted attention or legal tangle.
Where’s the fairness in that?
It’s a question I’ve asked countless times of friends and relatives. Most roll their eyes, dismissing the question as a query made by a mentally arrested man who never left adolescence and is angling to catch a glimpse of women’s breasts.
Others will state that it’s symptomatic of the sick patriarchal society we live in and it’s but one of many injustices men perpetuate on women every day, though the right to go topless is not at the top of the priority list.
The latter group to a degree is right, while the former may not be giving me enough credit for knowing how to operate the Internet if I really need cheap thrills that badly.
For me — and Ma and the hundred or so people like her — it’s always been about fairness. Why should one gender be treated differently than the other?
If a woman baring her breasts and showing her nipples in public can be regarded by the law as indecent, shouldn’t the same regard be given to men who behave the same way? After all, it’s the same region of the torso and the parts are nearly identical (hence that age-old question: why do men have nipples?).
But somewhere along the line we decided it was OK to treat women differently, whether it was in the way we underpay them for the same work performed by a male counterpart, the way they are commodified in media, or even their ability to wear or not wear what clothes they want.
Going topless shouldn’t be at the top of the things-to-change in the gender gap list. But it should provoke an interesting question and answer: Why aren’t women allowed to roam topless like their male brethren? If it is, ultimately, to protect them from danger, what does that say about us?
