April is the pearlest month day four: #wearthepearls is the other (warmer) #freethenipple

You guys are onto #freethenipple, right?

The 2014 film:

Inspired by true events, Free The Nipple follows a group of young women who take to the streets of New York City topless, to protest the archaic censorship laws in the United States. Activist Liv and With set out to start a movement and change the system through publicity stunts and graffiti installations while armed with First Amendment lawyers. The film explores the contradictions in our media-dominated society, where acts of violence and killing are glorified, while images of a woman’s body are censored by the FCC and the MPAA. What is more obscene: Violence or a Nipple?

And the ensuing movement, which got some attention this week after women in Iceland took it up as backlash against the backlash that hit a #freethenipple-promoting teenager:

As Iceland has no laws against bared breasts in public, many young women plan to go topless to pools this summer, like the group at Laugardalslaug in Reykjavík. Images pouring in from the campaign are aimed at normalizing the exposure of the female breast as a non-sexual act and securing for women the world over ownership over their own bodies. This debate is closely related to how women express themselves physically, sexually, exercise their reproductive freedoms, their right to move through public places unmolested and other feminist concerns. The fight for the right to choice, to freedom, to bodily autonomy must go on, in the East, the West, everywhere, until it is won for all people of this planet (Shambhavi Saxena, Youth Kiawaaz)

Great stuff. What I like best about the whole thing are those amazing hot-pink capes. And the hats!

hoods

One might think they’d rob the intended focal point of its attention-getting properties, but no, all that gleaming hot pink really works. It offsets the twin points of slightly darker and different-shaped skin like you wouldn’t believe, which kind of makes you realize, wow, you can wear nipples with ANYTHING.

Which, you know, back to the pearls. Like nipples suddenly too prurient for daily display, pearls showed up for many of us sometime in the teenage years along with the message that they had great value and should probably only come out on special occasions. But, like, what occasions? Like religious holidays? Like guest towels in the bathroom? Neither gift came with specific practical instructions as to how to do anything except just, like, have them.

I suspect I’m not alone in thinking #freethenipple is great but not something in which I want to directly participate. I offer instead, to those who stand with me at the socioeconomic intersection of “owns pearls but doesn’t wear them out” and “owns nipples but doesn’t wear those out either, but thinks #freethenipple is a fine idea,” a more understated and weatherproof alternative:

#wearthepearls

Here is their logo:

I don’t have ours yet. Now accepting submissions. Submissions may be in the form of typography and design, or an actual outfit. Outfits will be reviewed in person beginning tonight at Wine Cafe where The Frye plays the early show, 5-7 p.m., and then I’ll personally hang around to review and discuss logo submissions, tagline options, and what color capes we should get for group-running in slow motion down Riverfront.