I’ve tried my best to stay clear of Nipplegate (#FreeTheNipple), but I recently saw a photo that tipped me over the edge.
The woman in the photo had beautiful, round breasts. I’m going to say they were a modest, unprocessed C-cup.
Her nipples had been dissolved or blurred (whatever the apps call it), so they looked like cold, smooth, white marble mounds.
Needless to say, it was eerie and shocking (more like throw-up-in-my-mouth disgusting). It wasn't an artistic expression (note that Fox News blurs Picasso nipples), and it looked like a bloody Van Gogh slicing.
Something about that particular image affected me beyond what I’d seen before (excluding Chrissy Teigen’s Instagram war), and I realized the blasphemy, the misogyny and the disruption to humanity the disappearing nipple represents.
Are we so afraid of the female form that it must be altered to create some gender-neutral profile?
Will museum guards be armed with rolls of black tape to cover the mind-numbing, all-encompassing nipple?
Is Home Depot ready for the onslaught of buyers and the outrage the tape shortage will cause?
Every human being was born to a woman with nipples (for now, until we rise up from the petri dish).
Nipples are useful, a gift for nurturing and a joy for pleasing.
We pride ourselves on being the home of the free (i.e. sexually-repressed online masturbators), yet we hide nipples so that what?
So that men won’t get aroused, lift their Viagra-laden (paid by insurance, of course) penises to the roof, distract them from their Internet scrolling and cause them to salivate sans-nachos on game day?
This is shockingly similar to the basis for keeping women covered in other countries, places where we send our soldiers (male and female) to die for those freedoms, where clitoral and labial cutting is the norm (just outlawed in Nigeria) and where women who cannot drive or rule are covered so as not to arouse or distract men.
Is Nipplegate representative of a man’s inability for self-control worldwide?
Is it associated with the thought that short skirts cause abuse, that raped women enjoyed it and that Quaalude-bearing comedians should get a pass for violating countless women?
I’m going to raise my hand and say yes.
Admittedly, I am surprised by my passion on this issue, and I am amazed it took me so long to recognize the foundation for this behavior. It's just another way to disenfranchise women and promote various forms of sexism and discrimination.
Yes, it is that big of a deal; it's as big as double-D's right in your face with two hard nipples.
I’d like to join in solidarity and invite all of my nippled friends -- those who’ve been shaded and defocused; those whose nipples shine in the cold wind of summer office air conditioning; those who are perky, deflated or uneven -- to protest this unjust and belittling censorship of women.
Let’s stand proudly in our skin as productive human beings with regular body parts and define ourselves as we see fit, beyond the sexual objectification and weakness of men.
By the way, if we choose to be objectified, then so be it because that, too, is our choice.
So, Chrissy Teigen, do your thing.
Scout Willis, strut your stuff. You may not see me bare it all on social media, but I do stand with you in solidarity and salute you with each hard nipple because, well, it’s cold in here!
Press on, my friends. Nipples up.
