Go Topless Day

Exposed breasts were and are normal in many indigenous societies. Toplessness refers to the state in which a woman's breasts, including her areolas and nipples, are exposed, especially in a public place or in a visual medium. The male equivalent is barechestedness, also commonly called shirtlessness.

Although some social attitudes to increased body exposure began to soften during the late 1960s, contemporary Western societies still generally view toplessness unfavorably. During a short period in 1964, "topless" dress designs appeared at fashion shows, but those who wore the dresses in public found themselves arrested on indecency charges.

A more recent study of 116 college-age women in Australia found that those who had gone topless were more accepting of toplessness generally, more sexual, and had higher self-esteem and higher body.

In Canada, a poll in 1992 found that 38% favored general female public toplessness. Following that survey, several legal rulings in Canadian courts from 1996 to 2000 made public toplessness legal, but very few women go topless in public.

Go Topless Day was founded in response to the arrest of Phoenix Feeley (Jill Coccaro), a topless activist who was arrested for being topless in public in New York in 2005. The city of New York settled with Feeley for $29,000 because toplessness is legal there.

Go Topless Day is scheduled for the Sunday nearest August 26, Women's Equality Day, since on that day in 1920 women's suffrage was approved (in 1971 the U.S. Congress declared the day to be Women's Equality Day). The event encourages women to go topless in public, and men to cover their chests by wearing brassieres or bikinis.