Why Are Women’s Nipples Banned in Public and on Instagram, but Men’s Nipples Aren’t?

If you’re a man, you probably don’t think much about your nipples. And why should you? Hardly anybody notices them, or has rules about them, or asks you to cover them up—except in obvious places, like at the office or in Victoria’s Secret.

 

I’m a woman, so mine are obscene, indecent, lewd, banned on Instagram and other social media, and against the law in most places.

 

I am writing this story on a park bench just outside of Chicago. If I took my shirt and bra off right now, Illinois law says it would be an act of public indecency. It would be considered a lewd exposure of my body done with intent to arouse or to satisfy the sexual desire of another person. That’s a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. And because it’d be considered a sex offense, I may even have to register as a sex offender.

But you guys? You go right ahead and take your shirt off, join me on this park bench, walk down the street, post selfies on Instagram, and otherwise flaunt your little pink nips. Heck, you can even rub them with your fingers like you’re reenacting a scene from Showgirls. No one will care.

I will be over here putting an X of black tape over mine; camouflaging the very heart of my areola will keep me out of jail.

To better understand this nipple double standard—and find out what it’s going to take for American men and women to have equal nipple rights—we asked a handful of experts to weigh in on the gender disparity.

 

The male nipples weren’t the problem. The problem were her nipples.

“I didn’t know there was a policy against female nipples, and even more specifically that male nipples were okay,” she says. “The fetishization and censorship of female nipples gets to the point where the body is being seen only as a sexual object.”

Instagram’s Community Guidelines state they do not allow “some photos of female nipples,” though what gets through seem to fall into two groups: 1) Paintings and 2) Nips that have slipped past the site’s censors.

But male nipples? Grab your selfie stick and go to town. So last summer, Hebron created a Photoshopped male nipple, and suggested that women cut and paste the image over their actual nipples, thus making their topless shots more social media–friendly.

 

When you see nipples pasted over nipples, it just points out the absurdity of this double-standard, and begs the question, will we ever achieve true nipple equality?

The legal issues involving nipple censorship in the United States—according to Jeffrey J. Douglas, a criminal defense attorney in Santa Monica who has been defending all forms of sexual speech and conduct for more than 30 years—came from a time and place when Christianity “blamed women for giving men hard-ons.”

And Douglas doesn’t think the laws will change any time soon. “I am not optimistic because such changes require organized efforts by a relatively large minority,” he says, adding that the current rules are based on prohibiting women from arousing men, rather than prohibiting men from misbehaving when aroused.

 Are you up to the challenge? Show the world that you support female nipples. Print out two copies of the nipple below and attach them to your own nips. Then take a shirtless picture. Let's see if we can add some fuel to the #FreeTheNipple movement.

Will Instagram and other social media sites start banning shirtless men who dare to wear female nipples? Well, there's only one way to find out.

sex and women..............