Why Are These Women Are Pasting Men's Nipples over Theirs?

In 2013, police officers in New York City were issued department-wide memos with a simple reminder: do not arrest women going topless in public. This came after the NYPD paid $40,000 to Holly Van Voast, a performance artist who had been unlawfully arrested multiple times for exposing her breasts in public.

Across the Western world, steps are being taken to ease draconian laws which forbid women to do what men can do freely— bare their nipples. Advocates say there’s still much work to be done, but progress is being made. It’s no wonder, then, that social media’s banning of female breasts strikes many as inappropriate for platforms that should be a bastion of free expression.

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Earlier this year, Facebook finally gave in and began allowing users to upload photos of female nipples in breastfeeding pictures. But the #FreeTheNipple campaign isn’t done yet. Facebook still disallows female nipples under other circumstances, and the Facebook owned photo-sharing service Instagram suspends accounts that upload simple nudity, but allow hyper-sexualized non-nude images to be uploaded to their service freely.

That’s why artist Micol Hebron created a satirical “male nipple template” to cover ‘inappropriate’ female nipples with their identical male counterparts.

male nipple

The gag was quickly adopted by women across the web, and the results are hilarious. Who knew biting satire could be crowdsourced?

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The Times, They Are a-Changin’

Believe it or not, there was a time and place in history when exposing your nipples was not only acceptable, but required. In “The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body“, author Desmond Morris recounts a law passed in fifteenth century Venice regarding prostitutes who sat in windows, trying to attract customers. Homosexuality was growing in popularity (despite being punishable by death) and some prostitutes adapted to this new market by dressing as men. Hoping to curtail this practice, authorities passed a law that required prostitutes to expose their breasts at all times while working. This was ostensibly to prove their gender.