An Essay of Bared Breasts in Public

 

Topless Girl #2 – Gwen from Guelph, Ontario

August 17, 1991 was an extremely warm day in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. University student Gwen Jacobs rose and dressed to go outside. Or maybe she didn’t dress to go outside, depending on how you look at it. Gwen walked through downtown Guelph bare boobied…..and the world didn’t end.

I’ve seen pictures of Gwen ( much more decently covered than that pseudo-momentous day, and way overdressed if you ask me ) and I am confident no red-blooded Canadian male was going to object to a 19-year-old Ms. Jacobs stolling down King St. with her beautiful mammaries exposed. As far as I know she did not walk up to anyone and bash them in their faces; all accounts say she simply strolled along minding her own business.



Gwen was an attractive girl who must have caused quite a stir that day, nevertheless she was not troubled by ‘the Man’ and returned home unmolested.

Not one guy complained about this. In fact, in all my life, I have never heard of any red-blooded Canadian male tell a topless girl “Hey, cover up those fun-squeezies, they’re much too nice to look at!”

Gwen was not arrested until she sallied forth a second time on a subsequent day. Some mother of two toddlers complained that Gwen was showing her boobies in front of her kids and would the Police do something or are they just going to continue eating donuts?

Laws are slow to change and, by law, Gwen was indecently exposing herself. The Guelph Constabulary were not empowered with changing the law and, their hand forced, arrested Gwen before she could complete her second topless journey. I am a little concerned for the citizens of Guelph that the arresting Constable described the topless Jacobs as “having exposed her genitals”.

Despite the way Man-Bashers see the world, cops do not cruise around looking for ways to make women cover up. Cops have this weird idea that there are better laws to enforce. I know of one RCMP officer who responded to an Indecent Exposure complaint by some lady whose teenage next-door-neighbour was sunbathing topless in the backyard. He explained the lack of any charges in the matter by telling the dispatcher “…didn’t look indecent to me.”

As for Gwen’s exposure, any men involved in the incident were either complacent about the whole thing or powerless to ignore the law which the female complainant had insisted be enforced. Despite the entirely secondary role played by the Penis-Endowed in the Gwen Jacobs teapot tempest, the whole affair was interpreted as yet another example of suppression of women.

For reasons lost to me, the Canadian Women’s Rights movement were not busy doing anything worthwhile that month. A lack of more useful occupation is the only explanation I offer for the tremendous mustering of resources Femini$m threw into the Booby Trial of the Ontario Provincial Court. “No sister of ours is going to face a misdemeanor charge of Indecent Exposure on her own” they proclaimed to the only people who cared; the Media.

Gwen, feminists and the media combined to blow a walk on a sidewalk into a national rallying point for proving that equality equals showing some skin. They failed to reflect on the woman who stood up for her rights not to have her children see bare boobies by reporting Gwen to the police in the first place. No one interviewed her, no one criticized her, no one supported her.

The previous month these same ladies were probably protesting strip joints under the stock response “it objectifies women.” Perhaps bare titties only objectify if accompanied by frothy draft beer and tinny piped-in rock music?

Meanwhile girls all over European beaches were parading around in less than what Gwen wore that day and no one was batting an eye.

A simple defense of “who cares” should have been acceptable to Crown Prosecutor, Defense Council, Judge, Jury and Gwen. Unfortunately, a group of middle-aged women sought to protest the great injustice of it all by marching shirtless across the Peace Bridge between Ontario and New York

They made the 6 O’Clock News. Several seconds of bare, ugly, saggy breasts flashed from the Canadian Broadcasting News Centre to Canadian televisions coast to coast. It was not a pretty sight.

In fact, it was a perfect argument in support of judiscious modesty in deciding when those things should be covered up. Had I been Crown Prosecutor I would have offered the trial judge footage of the protestors as horrible examples of the consequences of allowing the general female population of Canada to strip to the waist.

Some cultures have a rule that nudity is fine, providing your body is not ugly.This rule should have been applied to those gravity impaired protesters.

When it was over, Gwen was convicted of the charge of Indecent Exposure, then acquitted on appeal to the Ontario Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court proclaimed it was alright for a women to expose her tatas as long as it was not “in a sexual manner”. Any judge who feels an exposed breast is not sexual has gotta be a queer or female.

The Crown Attorney did not appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Gwen claimed she had won the fight the moment she took off her top in public.

But whom did she defeat? Since the sisters won their fight women have gradually been freed to expose their titties across every Canadian province from sea to shining sea.

Thing is, nothing seems to have changed.