“Free your boobies, free your mind!” chanted a group of about 25 bare-chested women and men as they marched down Central Avenue on Sunday afternoon in a protest against gender inequality.
The protest in Phoenix was one of about 40 protests happening across the world to celebrate the fifth annual Go Topless Day.
Phoenix resident Jenna Duffy, 27, organized the march from Steele Indian Park down Central Avenue to Thomas Street. Duffy said she was inspired by a news story she saw on CNN.
Moira Johnston, an activist from Philadelphia, appeared in The Daily Beast in July for exercising her right to go topless in New York City.
Duffy organized the protest through a Raelian organization called GoTopless.org. On the site it explains that the Raelian movement is about topless equality. If men can bare their chests in public women should have the same right.
“It took off like a bullet,” Duffy said in reference to the support she received for the movement and her idea to hold a protest in Phoenix.
Arizona law does not allow women to walk around bare-chested, so female protesters were required to completely cover the areola.
To show their support, male protestors were encouraged to also cover up their areolas. Duffy and other protestors supplied the participants with pink duct tape.
“Women have every right to be as nude as men,” said protestor Don Titmus, a Naturist Action Community Representative from Mesa. “We have equality in other areas, but not the body.”
Titmus marched down Central Avenue pushing his young daughter in a stoller.
“She is going to grow up in a world of equality,” Titmus said.
Latisha Cadena, 39, from Phoenix was walking to Starbucks with her girlfriend, 28-year-old Brandy Schnepf, when the couple came across the topless protestors.
“This protest is an appropriate thing to do in an adult environment,” Cadena said. “It’s nice of them to do this on a weekend when schools aren’t in session. There’s not so many kids around.”
Cadena and Schnepf had no problem with the movement. Cadena said it was a reasonable request simply due to Arizona’s hot summers.
In a speech given at the end of the march, Duffy also referred to the Phoenix heat. She asked for her right to be topless, here, in one of the hottest states in the nation.
Duffy said the issue with women baring their breasts comes from the sexualization and objectification of women and breasts.
“The problem is not in how women are dressed,” Duffy said. “It’s in how they are viewed.”
In her speech Duffy said her goal was to have the USA topless by 2020.
“That’s eight years,” Duffy said. “The bras have been burned and they’ve heard us roar.”
John Boyce, 27, from Michigan said the march was a step in the right direction for gender equality. “You’ve got to start somewhere,” he said.
Steven Peterson, a 27-year-old from Wisconsin, agreed with Boyce, adding, “Today, topless. Tomorrow, world peace.”
Contact the reporter at cydney.mcfarland@asu.edu
