The #FreeTheNipple movement resurged last week, with women taking to social media in protest when an Icelandic teen became the victim of online trolls after she announced an upcoming “Free the Nipple” day at her school.
17 year-old Adda Þóreyjardóttir Smáradóttir, chairwoman of the Feminist Society at the Commercial College of Iceland, posted a picture of her nipples after a male friend tweeted a photo of himself topless. A Twitter troll soon body-shamed her for posting the image, which led her to remove it.
“It was difficult and I had to delete the picture…but it was enough to start a revolution,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
Soon, many women posted their own topless pictures in solidarity with Adda, using the #FreeTheNipple campaign to protest the sexualisation of women’s bodies.
The #FreeTheNipple campaign is in fact not new. The concept behind the social media trend originated in unequal public nudity laws, which allow men to walk around shirtless in public but outlaw women from doing the same. Film maker Lina Esco took issue with this, and her 2014 film ‘Free the Nipple’ follows a group of young women who take to the streets of New York topless in protest.
The film was not well received. The Guardian gave it a single star, describing it as a “just about unwatchable”. However the #FreeTheNipple campaign, which originated as a marketing tool for the 2014 movie, has transformed into a social media trend attempting to highlight inequal censorship laws.
The campaign, which describes itself as “an equality movement, and a mission to empower women across the world”, has benefited from celebrity support. Scout Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, took to the streets of New York topless in protest of Instagram’s no-nudity policy.
“Women are regularly kicked off Instagram for posting photos with any portion of the areola exposed, while photos sans nipple — degrading as they might be — remain unchallenged” Willis wrote.
She emphasised that differing attitudes towards male and female nudity are relatively new: “In the 1930s, men’s nipples were just as provocative, shameful, and taboo as women’s are now, and men were protesting in much the same way. In 1930, four men went topless to Coney Island and were arrested. In 1935, a flash mob of topless men descended upon Atlantic City, 42 of whom were arrested.”
The campaign has also gathered support from Cara Delevingne, Miley Cyrus and Willow Smith, all of whom have taken to social media to protest the hypocrisy of censoring female nipples.
While it is easy to dismiss the campaign as a celebrity-inspired trend, the sexualisation of breasts has implications beyond Instagram. In the USA it is effectively illegal for a woman to breastfeed in public in 35 states. In Louisiana, an exposed nipple can send a woman to jail for up to three years.
This issue is also relevant in the UK. In December, one woman was forced by staff at Claridge’s Hotel to cover up while trying to breastfeed her baby. Louise Burns told The Guardian: “My initial reaction was to burst into tears. This was my third baby. I had trouble breastfeeding the first two but this was going well. I didn’t expect to be admonished in a central London hotel.”
However, the #FreeTheNipple campaign has attracted criticism, with some commentators questioning the “revolutionary” nature of young, conventionally attractive women posting topless photos on social media.
Although the campaign aims to end the gratuitous sexualisation of women’s bodies, the movement itself may be gathering attention because it allows media outlets to legitimately use photographs of these women as “click bait” in order to generate traffic to their sites. The campaign therefore becomes ‘sexualised’ despite its intentions.
The problematic nature of the debate around nudity and sexualisation is highlighted by comparing the campaign with the ‘No More Page 3’ movement, which recently succeeded in campaigning to have topless photos removed from the pages of The Sun.
‘No More Page 3’ emphasised that pictures of men in popular media tend to show them clothed and “doing stuff”, while women are too often depicted passive and topless, sending out the message that their primary role is to serve men sexually.
However it must be noted that while at first glance the two campaigns appear to be fighting for contrasting goals, they both have at their heart a similar message. Both campaigns question the fundamental inequality in the way in which we relate to male and female bodies. By doing so, they highlight the need for a wider debate on nudity, sexuality and commodification in our society, and show us that real change is needed.
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