A story about in impromptu topless photo shoot raises an interesting question. The Empire State Observation Deck needs to be “family friendly”, so, no tits out. What I want to know is, in what way are children harmed be seeing breasts?
Clearly, most adult het males will have some sort of involuntary reaction to seeing bare breasts. Most adult het females, I think, will be disgusted, amused or indifferent. But children? I remember being a 10 y/o boy not particularly responsive to breasts, because the testosterone had not kicked in yet. I imagine young girls would be about the same. Teenagers, well, there is no hope for them, as long as we continue to embrace prudishness.
So, what does “family friendly” mean? Is the problem that the kids will be exposed to adult reactions, like dad drooling or mom whacking dad on the head because he is drooling? Honestly, do we really gain anything or help the kids with this absurd “modesty”?
Children, teenagers, and adults alike are not harmed in any way by being exposed to breasts.
Children being exposed to adults freaking out about a body part that we all share, are harmed by that freak out. And other than being a body part that is particularly attractive to certain people (and babies who have not been weaned yet) it is just an ordinary part of one’s chest, and is generally not a dirty part of the body.
I am exposed to men in tank tops whose unwashed, exposed, hairy, sweaty armpits are far, far, far more offensive to me, and its perfectly legal for them to expose this very dirty body part that offends the nose of everyone within a 40 foot radius.
Priorities. No one wants to see or smell your armpits.
Let breasts hang out all day. At least they don’t effing stink up the place.
I wonder the specifics of the “Top Free Equality” law in New York.
I’m sure private businesses are allow to set their own dress code, but I wonder if it has to be posted somehow. I was pretty sure the law was written in a “women must be allow to be topless anywhere a man is allowed to be topless” kind of a way. I seem to remember a story about a woman’s dispute with a yoga studio- the yoga studio as a private business had the right to say “no toplessness” but since the studio allowed toplessness for men they were not within their rights to deny toplessness for women.
The details I’ve relayed above may not be correct, but I am at work and I will not be doing any searches about toplessness while at work. I’ll research it when I get home and . . . if I don’t get too involved in my research, I’ll report back.
Anyway, if I’m correct, then the first question I’d ask is “Do they allow men to be topless?” and I would be surprised if they do.
I can’t imagine the suit has any merit though. Security guards are employed. Security did not interfere (the photographer says security was aware). They could retrain their staff that this is unacceptible and make the staff responsible for making “disruptive” patrons leave the establishment, but in this case: it’s over, it happened, the staff present allowed it. Even if the staff did not act in the way the proprietor may want them to have acted, the representative staff present at the time of the “incident” make the choice to let it slide.
Junior B. was, um, exposed to the beaches of Nice at age 7, without us having thought to talk to him about the colorful native customs. He glanced around once in a while, neither stared nor freaked, and made some interesting comments later at dinner. I think bare boobies are far more a problem for adults than kids.
“Family friendly” is code for mainstream (and Main Street) morals and values. Your grandmother would be shocked by a topless woman on the top of the Empire State (ok, maybe not yours, I don’t know yours. I had four of them and every one of them would have had some form of the vapors), and she is part of the family. Female toplessness is not acceptable in public according to mainstream morals and values - that may change - it does over time, and it could change quickly (I’m overjoyed our mainstream values on “gay” have changed so quickly - a little surprised, but delighted).
When the majority of people are in a “no big deal” state on breasts (and, given the adolescent nature of the American Male on the topic that might be a while) it will change. Right now, I don’t think my breasts are a big deal to me, but I’m not going out topless because doing so would result in inappropriate attention. It isn’t the breast that are damaging to children - its the inappropriate attention they get that is damaging to society, including children - girls learning body image and self esteem, boys learning about how women are treated.
I remember being about 4 or 5 riding my Big Wheel around in the apartment complex we lived in. This one particular building had this cranky old lady of about 70+. If you got too noisy around her apartment, she would come out there and yell at you.
The thing was, she would come out there topless! And to make things more horrifying to my 4yo self, she had a mastectomy. That lady scared me to freaking death! I tried to tell my Mom about it but she thought I was pulling her leg.
It’s a shame my frist exposure to boobies (or lack there of) was a 70+ year old lady with a mastectomy. [[[shudder]]]
I’ll add that, as an American Male with still a little bit of adolescent nature left, I have mixed feelings about the idea of breasts becoming “no big deal.”
The non-breezy side is the LI side; the wind blows Eastward up there for some reason, so the wind is always gale-force on the NJ side. Q: So, how can you tell which side was she photographed on?
To answer that, you might need to count the visible tiny bumps around her nipples…
And why are American kids so much more in need of protection from titties than European kids? They practically have lesbians with dildos in orange juice TV ads, but if one of our kids sees a nipple, apparently he’s halfway to becoming Heath Leger’s Joker.
Strictly, people are not really “harmed” by a completely nude couple having sex in public, so long as they are not too loud, keep out of the way, and clean up after themselves. There are social conventions (like "no sex in public) that people like to enforce by pretending there is some harm done because they don’t want to say “don’t do it because no one wants to see that”.
It appears from the photos that there was no inappropriate attention. The people on the observation deck seemed more interested in the view of the city than the model.
It IS sort of a double edged sword, isn’t it. If we want to de sexualize breasts so they are no big deal, it takes away some of their fun. The best thing is probably to keep them privately sexual (like some people find feet), but cut it out with the public sexualization. However, if you can get your entire gender to stop saying “look, boobies”- I wish you’d tackle the Israel Palestine problem with your superpowers first.
So, in this case, from your review of a few selected photos, there was no inappropriate attention and therefore we can answer conclusively that we are over that?