#freethenipple

2014 has officially been dubbed, the year of the nipple. We had…

Celebrity nipples:

Then nipple censoring began and Instagram accounts like Rihanna’s started getting shut down! The banning of just female nipples has sparked a media frenzy and feminist upraor! #FREETHENIPPLE campaign was started by Lina Esco (who also created a film of the same name) to raise awareness and topple the inequalities set by society between men and women.

Even the Starbucks logo has been censored! This is the old logo:

Scout Willis (Daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis) supported the cause by roaming around NYC topless, proving her point that if nipples are legal in New York, they should not be censored on the internet! (We once did a similar thing in Barnard, on Take Back The Night.)

Cara Delevingne also showed support by posting this photo:

As did Lena Dunham:

You can join the movement by giving the finger to censorship with one of these T shirts:

or by wearing this:

This bathing suit is one of my favorite things that the internet has ever given us:

(I grew up in a world where someone women with perfectly good hair cover their hair with other people’s hair for the sake of modesty. I’ve literally been saying FOR YEARS that to me wearing a wig of human hair is EXACTLY the same as wearing this bathing suit. Covering up a “taboo” body part with something that looks exactly the same! )

Or how about this nipple bouncy house at the Museum Of Sex:

The year of the boob. The year of the Nipple. #freethenipple. Feminism. BUT WAIT – you might be thinking, “What do boobs and nipples being free have anything to do with feminism? I’m a woman and I’m perfectly happy with my nipples being tucked away in my shirt where they belong!” Yes, that’s true, me too. The boobs I’ve used to breast feed two children for a year each are more than happy staying in their shirt. BUT guess what- the censorship of women’s bodies promotes misogyny. The double standard (as usual, always a double standard) over-sexualizes women. This is why I have such a problem with religion dictated dress codes for women – because by mandating that a woman needs to be covered in certain specific ways- it keeps her in a super sexual context for her entire life. By creating certain rules (made up by men, obviously) for the covering of a woman’s body – it sexualizes and fetishizes it. It means that a woman cant be considered as a PERSON and not the sum of her body parts, whether she is 80, 12, a supermodel or fucking Golda Meir. This concept of “modesty” actually promotes rape culture, and the idea that some woman was “ASKING FOR IT.” You know what else? Ever think about why the word for Mother is almost the same in every language? Mama? It’s because of boobs. It’s the sound babies make with their mouths full while breast feeding. I’ve always believed that as women we need to stop believing what they tell us, make our own rules. Decide what’s right for ourselves. Sometimes I feel like I was born at the bottom of a well, and it took me 30 years to realize there was more to life than that little patch of sunlight at the top. We are all making the climb up out of our own personal wells. And the gut reaction for some people to #freethenipple is going to be thats #wrong and also #stupid. That’s because of the collective cultural well that tells us women’s bodies need to be covered. In other parts of the world, that aint so! And last, I’ll end with a quote from Voltaire: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” Censorship is bad. #Freethenipple.