In 2019, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it is illegal for any town in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma to create any law forbidding female public toplessness.
What started as a small-scale fight has turned into a major win for the Free the Nipple movement, a global gender equality campaign that emphasizes women’s rights to choose how they display their bodies. It stemmed from anti-topless laws that were based on “negative stereotypes depicting women’s breasts, but not men’s breasts, as sex objects.”
(Article is yahoo.com/free-nipple-movement-women-now)
I thought Cheryl Tiegs freed the nipple in 1978? When her SI cover debuted, it showed more skin than SI had ever published. The white one-piece suit’s fishnet material made her breasts and nipples fully visible. Originally a throwaway photo not intended for publication, it caused so much controversy that Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell told CNBC he wouldn’t publish it today.
Wait, so it was freed? Then taken hostage again? And then freed again in 2019? I demand a timeline. And I’m confused, do we want it covered? Or out in the open? The opinion changes day by day. Joking aside, women’s bodies as sexual objects is a complex subject, one I don’t have the time to tackle fully, which means I probably shouldn’t have brought it up if I don’t have the time to argue my point. My apologies to my feminist friends, and I promise to delve into it more fully in a Part II, so you can send me hate email. But today I have nothing else prepared and anyway, like Jerry Seinfeld once said about the nipple, what’s the big deal? “It’s just a little brown, circular protuberance.”
So here are ten more iconic bathing suit moments.
- Babette March (Sports Illustrated 1964) When Babette March appeared on the cover of the premiere Swimsuit issue in 1964, the models only got five pages. Despite the lack of coverage compared to modern issues, readers cried, “What does this have to do with the sports?” SI acknowledged a loss in subscriptions, but carried on, printing angry letters to the editor and capitalizing on each year’s controversy.
- Kate Upton (Sports Illustrated 2012 and 2013) The caption next to Kate’s 2012 cover photo read, “Any Questions?” Um, no. She had every blonde on the planet looking in the mirror and wondering, “Do I look a little like her?” Strangely, the cover with Kate in a tiny red bikini caused backlash because it shows Upton’s stomach looking uncharacteristically flat, and she has a “strangely absent nether region.” Even Upton’s face doesn’t look like her real features, clearly showing how the designers went overboard on the airbrushing. A woman this gorgeous needs to be airbrushed? In 2013, she posed in Antarctica sub-zero temperatures with cavorting penguins in the background. This was at the time when people liked their supermodels anorexically stick-thin, so Kate got in trouble for having curves and for getting hypothermia. She can’t win. She is now considered the ideal female physical type. Go figure.
- Carrie Fisher as Slave Leia (1983). Not a “Star Wars” fan, but even I remember Princess Leia’s metal bikini.
- Bo Derek running out of the water in “10.” (1979). Bo had to do that scene three times, and she hates running. When she and her husband John Derek watched the scene in the cutting room, he turned to her and said, “This is going to make you a huge star, and it will majorly fuck with our lives.” It did both.
- Brooke Shields in “Blue Lagoon” (1980). It flopped with critics but was a blockbuster at the ticket booths. Roger Ebert called it “the dumbest movie of the year,” and it is terrible, almost painful to watch in its horribleness. It also dealt with the taboo subject of sexualized innocence. Fourteen-year old Brooke in her tiny bikini top and white sarong wasn’t the last time she stirred up controversy.
- Pam Anderson in “Baywatch” (1995). Her red lifeguard suit straining tightly against her…well, you know. Love or hate her, that suit caused quite the stir, and gave a huge boon to the plastic surgery movement.
- Cameron Diaz and Demi Moore in “Charlie’s Angels” (2003). Cameron the good girl in white, Demi the bad girl in black. They pass each other on the beach, both with surfboards under their arms, and you just don’t know where to look first. Iconic.
- Farrah. Red Suit. (1976). The poster every boy, my brothers included, had on their bedroom wall. Or ceiling. Oh, and her nipple was definitely freed, and no one made a big deal out of it. How have we gone backwards?
- Helen Mirren’s red bikini shot in Italy (2008). This drop-dead gorgeous woman was 63 when that paparazzi shot went viral. It even inspired Tina Fey’s comedy skit about a woman’s “LFD.” Mirren has said that she will never and has never to this day lived that picture down. I would think not. Helen Mirren doesn’t have an LFD.
- Phoebe Cates in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982). You waited patiently, and here it is. Coming out of that pool and walking toward Judge Reinhold. You know the rest. She deserves the bathing suit Oscar in my book.