Women around the country are taking off their tops on GoTopless Day, a day that promotes gender equality and women’s rights to bare their breasts in public.
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The annual worldwide day of protest is a call for women to have the same right as men to bare their chests in public. In Ontario, the law already gives women that right.
Both men and women were among the demonstrators who gathered at Civic Center Park before marching down the 16th Street Mall. The legality of women going topless varies by state.
There are only a handful of states in America where it is illegal for women to go topless.
August 282016 was national “Go Topless Day” in the United States and beyond.
In Arizona, it is considered indecent exposure if a woman exposes the nipple of her breast in public and “is reckless about whether the other person, as a reasonable person, would be offended or alarmed by the act”, according to the statute.
Similar Go Topless Day demonstrations have been happening around the US, including parades in Los Angeles and New York City.
The parade was part of the ninth annual International Go-Topless Day, which aims to encourage women to unburden themselves from their shirts and bras – as a feminist statement.
A group of about 50 women and men walked topless in the oceanside Los Angeles neighbourhood of Venice. One marcher carried a sign reading: “My Body Is Not A Crime”.
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Though marchers garnered attention from onlookers, the organization’s paramount goal is to eliminate the shock provoked by women’s bare breasts.
