That headline in the Huffington Post caught my eye the other day. It concerned protests by topless women in Ukraine, leading me to think that this last oppressed minority group was finally going to gear up for its struggle for equality, that topless women everywhere were beginning to stir against the shackles of inequality, that they were ready to seize their day and march out of the shadows of repression and into the pellucid light of freedom.
Anyone who has bothered to try to understand topless women knows that they are different. Any topless woman will tell you that from earliest youth, they realized they were not like the girls who wanted to wear shirts. While other girls were dressing up their dolls, topless women were discarding the clothing of their playthings and looking for poles to twist their Barbies around. While other little girls played house, topless women played bar.
In school, there was bullying. And pinching and cupping, and sniggering, too. Name-calling became a daily feature of their existence. They heard their precious breasts derided as "melons," "knobs," and even "bazorkas" in phrases dropped from the mouths of thoughtless boys, males that yearned for them privately while scorning them publicly. Only at home, when their parents weren't looking, could they be themselves, borrowing mother's heels and perhaps a string of her pearls to hang tastefully in their décolletage as they modeled for the mirror.
As soon as they could escape, they headed for the cities, only to find themselves caged in the "topless ghetto" of clubs, bars and peep shows. Sure, they lashed out, but most turned their self-loathing inwards. Insanely high heels. Aggressive tattoos. Areolas stabbed by multiple piercings. They had their admirers, but it was a love that dared not speak its name, especially if their fans were talking to their wives, mothers, girlfriends or employers regarding questionable charges on their credit cards.
All along, their sense of injustice had been building. Had not all of female humanity once been topless? Doesn't toplessness still command respect in some places, most notably European beaches and occasional issues of National Geographic Magazine? Hadn't famous women of history, Cleopatra, Nefertiti, Venus de Milo, made valuable contributions to humanity's progress while topless?
Once the dam of oppression had been breached, I foresaw a breathtaking expansion of rights for topless women. The right to marry topless, to be paid equally for doing the same work as the non-topless. We will have openly topless politicians, news announcers, celebrities. We will be startled by the famous women who "come out of the closet," by leaving their upper body coverings in there.
The military will accommodate itself to the new order, establishing a new policy of tolerance, perhaps summed up in the phrase "Don't ask, don' tell and don't stare."
And now I read the actual Huff Po article and realize that the topless women are not fighting for the right to be topless. They are protesting perfectly ordinary injustices, such as the Ukrainian national legislature being entirely composed of yapping male blowhards, instead of being mostly composed of them as we have here in the US, and an influx of prostitutes expected for a major sports event in 2012. They do it topless because people pay attention to women without shirts.
Protesting sex workers by getting naked may make more sense in Ukraine than it does here, but who am I to talk about making sense? I've apparently misunderstood the whole issue.
I feel like a boob.
Anyone who has bothered to try to understand topless women knows that they are different. Any topless woman will tell you that from earliest youth, they realized they were not like the girls who wanted to wear shirts. While other girls were dressing up their dolls, topless women were discarding the clothing of their playthings and looking for poles to twist their Barbies around. While other little girls played house, topless women played bar.
In school, there was bullying. And pinching and cupping, and sniggering, too. Name-calling became a daily feature of their existence. They heard their precious breasts derided as "melons," "knobs," and even "bazorkas" in phrases dropped from the mouths of thoughtless boys, males that yearned for them privately while scorning them publicly. Only at home, when their parents weren't looking, could they be themselves, borrowing mother's heels and perhaps a string of her pearls to hang tastefully in their décolletage as they modeled for the mirror.
As soon as they could escape, they headed for the cities, only to find themselves caged in the "topless ghetto" of clubs, bars and peep shows. Sure, they lashed out, but most turned their self-loathing inwards. Insanely high heels. Aggressive tattoos. Areolas stabbed by multiple piercings. They had their admirers, but it was a love that dared not speak its name, especially if their fans were talking to their wives, mothers, girlfriends or employers regarding questionable charges on their credit cards.
All along, their sense of injustice had been building. Had not all of female humanity once been topless? Doesn't toplessness still command respect in some places, most notably European beaches and occasional issues of National Geographic Magazine? Hadn't famous women of history, Cleopatra, Nefertiti, Venus de Milo, made valuable contributions to humanity's progress while topless?
Once the dam of oppression had been breached, I foresaw a breathtaking expansion of rights for topless women. The right to marry topless, to be paid equally for doing the same work as the non-topless. We will have openly topless politicians, news announcers, celebrities. We will be startled by the famous women who "come out of the closet," by leaving their upper body coverings in there.
The military will accommodate itself to the new order, establishing a new policy of tolerance, perhaps summed up in the phrase "Don't ask, don' tell and don't stare."
And now I read the actual Huff Po article and realize that the topless women are not fighting for the right to be topless. They are protesting perfectly ordinary injustices, such as the Ukrainian national legislature being entirely composed of yapping male blowhards, instead of being mostly composed of them as we have here in the US, and an influx of prostitutes expected for a major sports event in 2012. They do it topless because people pay attention to women without shirts.
Protesting sex workers by getting naked may make more sense in Ukraine than it does here, but who am I to talk about making sense? I've apparently misunderstood the whole issue.
I feel like a boob.
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