By GREG B. SMITH
Daily News Staff Writer

A federal judge yesterday declared that, yes, there is a difference between male and female breasts.

In doing so, he upheld a 1995 city law that zones female topless dancing out of residential neighborhoods.

The Cozy Cabin, an East Elmhurst, Queens, cabaret that said in court papers it features "tasteful and non-obscene female bare-chested dancing," filed suit challenging the law, arguing it unfairly singles out women because it doesn't address male topless dancing.

It also steps on the First Amendment right of freedom of expression, the lawsuit said.

But Manhattan Federal Judge John Martin found the law can legitimately make a distinction between the sexes. "Rightly or wrongly, our society continues to recognize a fundamental difference between the male and female breast," he ruled.

"One does not have to be either a psychologist or a sociologist to recognize that if it were widely known that 10 topless women were walking down Park Ave. and 10 topless men were walking down Madison Ave. the effect on the traffic on Park Ave. would be substantially greater than on Madison Ave.," Martin said.

Cozy Cabin owner Adele Buzzetti, who said most of her customers are cops and firefighters, called her dancers "attractive women who dance seductively to convey their personal expression of female sensuality."

A topless dancer who joined the lawsuit, identified as Vanessa Doe, described her job in esthetic terms: "My dance is choreographed to convey an erotic message to my audience."

In their lawsuit, they pointed to male topless dance clubs such as Chippendales and argued it was unfair for the new law to say nothing about male breasts. But Martin wasn't buying it.

In a 17-page ruling, he argued that male dancers at Chippendales could be subject to restriction if they exposed other presumably objectionable parts of their anatomies.

But male pectorals, the judge said, aren't considered particularly sexy by society.

"Indeed, it appears that many female dancers go to great lengths to surgically enhance their breasts in order to insure that they could not possibly be mistaken for male dancers," the jurist wrote.

Advertisements for Chippendales "do not place a comparable emphasis on the extraordinary dimensions of the breasts of their male dancers," he noted.

Ivan Alter, a lawyer for Cozy Cabin, said Martin missed the point: "This law discriminates against women. Men are free to, and do, engage in topless dancing in bars. Women should be able to do it. It's an unfair deprivation to women."

Assistant Corporation Counsel Gabriel Taussig said Martin's ruling "strongly supports our position . . . that the law is constitutional."

Original Story Date: 040997
Original Story Section: City Central