Female exposure and the protesting woman

Last year, while driving down Sydney's normally busy Parramatta Road on a quiet Sunday afternoon, I saw a young woman walking topless. As she went by a pub, several men leaned back on their barstools to watch her pass, but she walked matter-of-factly on. I realised I had never before seen a topless woman on a city street, except on a billboard, or at Mardi Gras. This essay is a study of the complexities of live female public nudity outside of its traditionally sanctioned erotic contexts (such as striptease). It canvasses instances in which women have used public nudity for both protest and celebration, and it argues that women who seek to use their naked bodies in protest and celebration face complexities and dilemmas that reveal the limits of what female nakedness can mean within a patriarchal hegemony. I am interested in the extent to which historical meanings of nakedness (including religious and mythological meanings) mayor may not provide a resource for bodily action. In particular, I note the persistence of a sacrificial logic at work in some protest forms, and the potential appeal of this logic to women. I conclude, though, by examining some instances in which women have eschewed this logic and publicly used their naked bodies in more joyful or celebratory ways.