Free the Nipple?

For starters I would like to apologise for not writing since November... November. I've basically been so so busy with A Levels since this was my last year. But, I'm not completely finished with all my exams and all my studies which is so nice! It means I have a lot more time to focus on the little things that I enjoy, i.e., writing my blog. 

Anyway, just to start off with the many things I have to post in the upcoming weeks / months here is an assignment I did for my Journalism course. The assignment what to write an opinion column piece inspired but the various examples we had looked at. Here is the one I did, which is on Free the Nipple.

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The phrase ‘free the nipple’ is something that has being going around for a while now, however there is a severe lack of knowledge on the subject. Starting in America, Free the Nipple is a movement and campaign which supports equal gender rights regarding the laws and restrictions associated with female nipples.

Free the Nipple is regularly seen as petty issue, generally it is seen as a campaign so women can ‘get their tits out’ or to walk around in public without a shirt. This is most definitely not the case, and, with many movements and campaigns, the people who are the quickest to judge are generally the ones who have the least knowledge on the subject - which I personally find excruciating tedious and frustrating. 




Since the dawn of time women have always been oppressed for what they wear, think the Victorians, Romantics and Edwardians: a time where flashing a bit of ankle was seen as highly inappropriate. However, when you think about it, in all the paintings we see from these times periods, they definitely do not shy away from a females bust and in fact there are several occasions where they were emphasised.


This was the start of a sexist and patriarchal society which still exists today. Women and their breasts have been, and still are, objectified all over the media. It is seen as perfectly okay for a women to stand stark naked in a magazine while people stare at her, objectifying and sexualising her as just a ‘pair of tits on a page’. This is all seen as completely normal, but as soon as women want to be in control of their body and stand up against oppression, this is seen as horrifying and inappropriate. 



What many people don't know is that in some states of America today it is illegal for a woman to expose her nipple in public, this includes breastfeeding. Yes, a natural human function (and the reason women even have breasts) is illegal in public. Utterly ridiculous. Women have been shamed into hiding their bodies from the world and on going ‘slut-shaming’ of girls and women who do take control of their bodies is something that really needs to change. Don’t get me wrong, society has moved forward greatly, but there is still so much that can be done in order to make an equality between the sexes.

People need to get out of this mindset that boobs are a sexual thing. They're not. Society and the media have made them sexual. They have both sexualised them to a point that we believe this. When really, they are for breastfeeding. That is why we have them. Female nipples are also, anatomically, exactly the same as males with just some extra fatty tissue. You don’t see the media sexualising male nipples? No. Because we live in a sexist and patriarchal society that are afraid of a a woman who is in control of her body. Grow up world. There are worse things that should be illegal, and showing a little bit of nipple is definitely not one of them.

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