In a world where the genitalia of millions of women are mutilated every year to discourage premarital sex, the double standard that men can be topless where women can’t—on beaches, television, and Instagram—seems a mild injustice.
But in many Western countries, that injustice has sparked a popular movement called Free the Nipple, with celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Cara Delevingne raising awareness on social media about breast censorship and the greater issue of gender inequality.
Now, a new film reimagines the online movement as an army of female revolutionaries fighting police and the patriarchy for the right to unfurl their breasts on America's streets, subways, and social media sites.
Out today, Free the Nipple tells the story of a young, relentlessly earnest female journalist, With (Lina Esco), whose reporting on women protesting topless in New York City leads her to cross the line from journalistic observer to equal rights crusader. With is enchanted by Liv (Lola Kirke, sister of Girls star Jemima), a feminist activist who provides an insider’s view of the cause and the obstacles she faces even in liberal New York City, where it has been legal for a woman to be topless in public since 1992.
With presumes that the liberated nipple story will be her Watergate, making her career as a scribbler. As she types feverishly on the floor of her apartment, we see a montage of news clips—the mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater during a showing of The Dark Knight Rises, Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl nip-slip—exposing a culture where sex is stigmatized more than violence. Why is it okay to show so much blood and gore on TV and in Hollywood movies, but ban images of barely bare-breasted women breastfeeding on Instagram?
It’s a good question, but when With submits her passion project to her boss at News Corp—the stereotypical grey-haired dinosaur in a suit who just doesn't get it—he looks down his long nose and thrusts the hard copy in her face. “If you’re in this to change the world, you’re in the wrong business,” he says before showing her the door, in one of the movie’s many ham-handed and clichéd scenes.
Of course With wants to change the world, so she becomes a feminist activist, galvanizing a troop of women to take the movement national and break free from their shackles (in this case, their bras).
“The nipple has become the Trojan Horse for a bigger dialogue to begin about inequality and oppression,” says the 29-year-old Esco, an actress who, like her character, is passionate, relentlessly earnest (it’s more endearing in real life), and who paused her career to focus on activism. (Free the Nipple is Esco’s directorial debut).
Indeed, it was Esco who introduced the movement to celebrities, writing about it in the Huffington Post. Days after her editorial was published, Miley Cyrus tweeted a picture of herself with a fake nipple over her eye to @freethenipple. (Cyrus and Esco met while working together on the 2012 film LOL).
Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/
