Topsy Turvy - Women bear their breasts in a public park and end up at police headquarters
 By: Matt Peterson July 17, 2002
 
If you were to see a woman in public bearing her chest, you would likely say she is going "topless." Activists who believe in the right of women to display their breasts publicly would rather you use the term "topfree" to indicate the liberating aspect of this act and not just the absence of clothing.
To help expand awareness about the right of women and men to go "topfree" in New York State, four women and several men held a picnic in DeWitt Park last week sans tops. While not illegal, two women, Sareanda Lourdes, 25, and Ilonka Wloch, 31, were arrested and processed before being released with an apology from Interim Police Chief Lauren Signer.

According to the women, the arrest was a symptom of the problem that they were fighting, which is ignorance about the right of women to bear their breasts any place that men are allowed to. "We held our picnic as a celebration and that was why we invited our male friends as well to make the point that this is really OK and that it feels great to be this way," Wloch says. "Having a European background, I have been exposed to a lot of people being topfree in public spaces. It is just a natural way to be."
Lourdes sees going topfree as a powerful way to help get people to not see the female breast in a purely sexual light.
"By unveiling our breasts, we are dissolving the tantalizing secrecy that encourages the rape and objectification of women," she says.
Since the arrest, both women have worked with Signer to put a plan in place to better educate city officers about public decency laws. The IPD has already hired a trainer to make the police better aware of a 1992 ruling by the New York State Supreme Court that found it unconstitutional for women to be prejudiced against in such a way.
The problem, according to Signer, is that officers are referring to the penal law, which still mandates that women walking around in public with bare chests is illegal.
"The law is on the books. Even though it was struck down by state court, the legislature never changed the law. Thus there is some confusion over what the law is," Signer says.
Wloch believes the picnic, of which there will be another this week, will inspire more women to embrace their right to not wear tops in public.
"This was kind of an experiment and I now I see more and more women walking around Ithaca topfree," she says.
One woman who is encouraged by the picnic incident is Kayla Sosnow, who, while not actually at the picnic, is a major activist with the Topfree Equal Rights Association.
"The exciting thing about this movement is how women are taking it upon themselves to fight oppression," says Sosnow, who, herself, served jail time in Florida for going barechested. "We are allowed to take our shirts off for men's entertainment at strip clubs, but not for comfort. That's just wrong."
©Ithaca Times 2002