The weather’s finally getting warmer in New York, and members of the city’s most topless literary club took to Central Park Tuesday to celebrate. Ladies of The Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society laid out on the grass and bared their breasts underneath the spring sun, as part of their mission to “make reading sexy” and remind New Yorkers that yes, toplessness is legal in the five boroughs.
I suppose that, after being bundled up for so long during a New York City winter, the idea of going topless in Central Park while reading probably sounds very appealing. For most guys, the idea of seeing a group of topless women might just be the first sign of Spring.
Of course, I’m not certain what it says (certainly nothing good) about us that a group of women doing something as innocent and commonplace as reading (albeit while topless) is considered newsworthy. Yeah, I know; we’re ridiculously repressed when it comes to issues of sex, sexuality, and the human body. We live in a culture in which a naked body is considered something nasty, dirty, and/or sinful. Because of this, we teach our children that nudity and anything even remotely sexual are things to be discussed in hushed tones and cloaked in an aura of shame.
The pornography industry thanks you….
Why is it that seeing a naked female breast is something dirty and sinful…but viewing violence and its byproducts raise no concerns and is viewed as perfectly acceptable? Why is titillation seen as evil and wrong, while death and destruction is something that causes no alarm?
Perhaps some day we’ll evolve to the point where seeing a woman topless will evoke the same response as seeing a man topless. It should be something normal, natural, not something viewed as worthy of gasps and breathless condemnation. Until then, I suppose we’ll continue to be exposed (no pun intended) to topless women and continue treating them as sexual objects whose primary role is to titillate and satisfy men.
Read on, ladies….
