Three sisters were asked to change their tops in an area where it’s legal for women to go topless.
Because of the protests that started in 1991, three sisters plan to file formal complaints about the way a police officer in a Canadian province stopped them for riding their bicycles with their tops down in the country.
has been legal for women to bare their breasts in Ontario.
However, when Tameera, Nadia, and Alysha Mohamed took off their tops on a hot Friday while driving in Kitchener, Ontario, they said they were stopped by an officer.
According to reports, the police officer asked them to change their shirts, and Tameera Mohamed replied, “It is our legal right in Ontario for women to be topless.”
Tameera Mohamed says the policewoman only started backing up when her sister Alysha started recording him on her smartphone.
Staff Sargent Michael Haffner said, “We are doing an internal assessment of the situation. It is a current law that if a woman chooses to go topless, that is her right. ”
Reasons for and against going on a naked bike ride
The women plan to file a formal complaint with the independent police inspector’s office.
Nadia Mohamed told reporters: “When men take off their tops in public, it’s obvious because it’s a hot day and clearly for their comfort.” Women should be given the same freedom. Although we have that right legally, we clearly do not have it socially. ”
This Saturday, the women are holding a rally to support the desexualization of the female body.
We’ve looked at the sexualization of women’s bodies before, especially when Colombian women’s cycling clothing turned into a media frenzy simply because the gold on their skinsuits looked flesh-colored in some ways.
The idea that women’s bodies cannot be shown without being sexual in some way is also attacked with the use of the popular and semi-humorous social tag # LiveTweetYourPeriod.
# LiveTweetYourPeriod: Liberation or Information Overload?
The tag came about after an artist uploaded a photo of a woman in a bloodstained nightgown on Instagram and it was removed for being “offensive.”
As Jenna Wortham so neatly explained in the New York Times, “[The hashtag] appears to be] a micro-protest against a modern-day paradox. “Social media is saturated with images of hypersexualized women, but these are rarely seen as outrageous as content that dares to reveal how a woman’s body actually functions.”
Guess what-who shouldn’t be able to do women topless when it’s perfectly acceptable for men to do so? And would you cycle uncovered?
