Greek literature

In 2008 the first annual Go Topless Day was organized in the US. In 2012 the #FreeTheNipple campaign was launched, prefacing Lina Esco’s 2014 film of the same name. Bruce Willis’ daughter Scout went shopping topless; Jean-Paul Gaultier sent a male and female model down the catwalk with their nipples on show and wearing the Free the Nipple slogan; and Miley Cyrus flashed Jimmy Kimmel. These movements argue, as they say on the tin, that it should be acceptable by legal and cultural norms for women to bare their breasts in public. The question is one of equality and bodily autonomy, and the movement is a way of making women’s voices heard. In our current fraught times, these voices are angry. At International Women’s Day just this year, women from the FEMEN activist group marched topless in Paris to protest against the ‘Fascist Epidemic’ (these words painted on their chests). In their mission statement, FEMEN declare that ‘Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are bare breasts’ – and they profess themselves to be a ‘modern incarnation of fearless and free Amazons’.