June 22, 1997

IT'S TIME TO CRY HALTER OR BUST

By MICHELE MANDEL
Toronto Sun So bare breasts are tops in the naked city, huh?
According to our headline yesterday, an Angus Reid poll found that Ontario just loves its women topless.
Only problem is, it's not exactly the naked truth. The poll numbers actually told a rather different story: An overwhelming two-thirds of Ontario residents disapprove of women going topless in public. And of those, half of them strongly disapprove.
So why the discrepancy, you wonder? I call it mammary mania. This Topless in Toronto thing is making usually sane editors rather giddy around here. It's sort of like watching little boys let loose in a suddenly unlocked candy store. You know: Boobies, boobies, boobies, and we get to run black lines through their nipples!
Of course, it is only coincidence that all the topless babes gracing our pages lately have been well-endowed. Hey, what about equality for all? But we digress.
Personally, I don't want to see any more half-naked women displaying their wares on our front page. I mean, surely, this can't be what feminist Gwen Jacob had in mind when she took her fight all the way to the Ontario Court of Appeal. Here she's trying to boost the sisterhood and smash the patriarchy and ends up boosting circulation for The Toronto Sun? Poor thing must be quaking in her granola.
Still, I'd hoped we'd all grow up and move off the boob beat and give our talented headline writers a break from finding new ways of keeping abreast of mammary puns. Even our esteemed editor, Lorrie Goldstein, promised back on June 11 that the jiggle may soon be up. "No we won't run pics of topless women all summer," he vowed in an editorial. "As one senior editor notes, we are already running out of black ink."
Guess we found a new supply.
So there I was yesterday, feeling a little embarrassed at how the Sun had taken to toplessness with such wanton gusto, when I opened the Globe and Mail to find even that grey bastion of conservatism and good taste has a full-page pic of bare breasts -- strategically covered, of course, by the model's arm. Sort of a Demi Moore thing.
At least over here, we're up-front gawkers. At the Globe, they try to disguise their salaciousness by offering us instructions on proper breast etiquette and breast accessorization.
Among their erudite observations, and I quote: "A definite no-no is short-shorts, as they run the risk of making you look like a Playmate on her day off." Other topless fashion tips include avoiding the baseball hat, for the same reasons noted above, taking a cold shower to "give your breasts a lift" and metallically enhancing said breast with a nipple ring.
All very educational. Me, I'll certainly pass on the latter. I'm still too afraid to get my ears pierced.
So what does all this media mania suggest? That surely Gwen was dreaming in technicolor when she thought legalizing toplessness would make the breast as sexless as the shoulder.
That given, if you're a mom and this law makes it easier to breast feed in public, enjoy. After too many years of hiding behind trees in malls and nursing in smelly bathrooms, I'm envious of new mothers who now have a ruling to squash those looks of disgust on too many pinched Victorian faces.
If women want to go topless to assert their court-upheld right to burn their titties and risk melanoma just like men -- right on, Sister. Go to it.
If it's a steamy day in the city, and that teeny, weeny bikini top is giving you a nasty tan line or is just too hot to bear, take it off. I've always felt a little mystery was far sexier, but hey, that's just me.
As for you boys, give them a break, ditch the binoculars and enough with the newspaper photos. Isn't it time to declare the candy store closed?
However, and call me a prude, I think we should draw the tan line at swinging topless through McDonalds. I do not believe that office Topless Fridays are the way to go for the United Way. I don't think it's safe or advisable for young girls to reclaim their bodies from lecherous patriarchy by walking bare-breasted down, say, Jarvis. And in the heat of the summer, I do not want a bare-boobed squeegee girl washing my windows, any more than I want a bare-chested squeegee boy. Do you know how few squats have showers?
Off the beach or your backyard, it smacks more of poor taste, than a bid for natural equality. No shirt, no shoes, no service seems to have stood us in good stead. No reason to change that now. I mean, just imagine the sight of bare-breasted women in the freezer section of your local grocery store. Well, you get my point.
Despite my reservations, you won't find me at Queen's Park next weekend. That's when women from the Moral Support Movement plan to rally for an end to toplessness. You know the argument: If God wanted us to be naked, we would have been born that way. Er, something like that.