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The battle for the breasts of America
On 21 June 1986, seven American women were arrested for being topless in a park in Rochester, New York. They had been protesting against a law that criminalised topless women but not topless men. In court, Judge Walz ruled that the state was right to require that “the female breast not be exposed in public places” because “community standards… regard the female breast as an intimate part of the human body”. Since “community standards” did “not deem the exposure of males’ breasts offensive”, the judge concluded, men were permitted to wander about shirtless. In other words, women’s breasts were offensive; men’s were not.