#FreeTheNipple until we don’t have to think about it anymore

So, until the day comes when all we have to say about nipples is positive and reaffirming, keep ‘em posted on social media.

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The #FreeTheNipple movement gets plenty of tags on Twitter, even having its own account and several other accounts, like i-D magazine, devoting many posts to #FreeTheNipple promotion.

It started in Iceland most recently, but #FreeTheNipple has come to America and attracted some celebrities to its cause all for the sake of a 17-year-old girl who hoped to start a revolution and desexualize women’s breasts.

The movement has been around for awhile, but the Icelandic teenager brought it back to life with a Facebook profile picture of her breasts in response to a male friend’s shirtless photo.

Even though she took the photo down not long after posting it because of negative comments, it was up long enough to start a new wave of the movement and to get her plenty of support from the feminist community (male and female alike) sharing its own nipples on social media.

The idea behind the whole movement is to give women the same freedom to bare their nipples as men have, and to take away the sexual stigma associated with women’s breasts.

First, we should be past debating this issue. True gender equality means women’s bodies shouldn’t be sexualized any more than men’s are, and yet we can’t get away from it. Men can be without a shirt, but a topless woman is labeled obscene, inappropriate.

Second, women shouldn’t have to take to social media in order to acquire these rights, and they wouldn’t if these rights were available to them in everyday life. There are so many rules for how women must cover up and how their bodies will be viewed if they don’t and it makes it difficult to embrace being oneself, wholly, completely and in the nude.

Third, social media is a way to drastically increase that exposure and gain the freedom sought on a large scale all at once. Yes, women could start by going topless in their own homes and branch further and further out into the world, but it won’t have nearly the same effect or reach nearly as many people.

Finally, there should have never been a reason for #FreeTheNipple in the first place, but since there is, wouldn’t it be great if women could express themselves in that way without backlash? So, until the day comes when all we have to say about nipples is positive and reaffirming, keep ‘em posted on social media.