Solstice Blossomed Breasts—Sexual Free Speech #1

I missed noting the solstice by 3 days. But I thought of Cindy Violette’s past ritual gatherings and family-safe naked pool parties in Galloway, Michele Haytko, who helped me get this blog started, and a wonderful writer and lesbian--the Ms. Devine, who each celebrate the sun’s rite of passage in their own ways.

The blossoming of flowers and heat bring a fecundity, an animal-mimicked desire by wearing less clothes, exposing flesh, moving our bodies with intentions of playfulness and to tease the soul risqué. Even if you’re not so erotically- open, the sprite must be on your mind just a tad.

I’ve been naked in public, of course. But always in quiet settings, where I felt still a little naughty. And my son was often nursed in public (hey I had a “C”-cup for a good many months), even on an airplane sitting next to an evangelist minister, who looked at the undertaking with quiet uncertainty. (Public breastfeeding is rumored to be illegal in some states, but LaLeche League says that it’s more a lack of laws affirming breast feeding, than outlawing it.)

My breasts, long ago stopped blossoming, are usually described as cute, wavering between a full “A” and a just-made-it “B” depending upon how five-pounds gained/lost are distributed. They are cupped nicely on the underside, but could use a little muscle on top, to get them securely in the “mid-B” range (“breast strokes” at the pool this summer?).

My nipples, documented in photo and in text, are long, and plump easily with temperature or excitement. Yet, men rarely suckled them, with a few wonderful exceptions, and I was always too shy to guide the just right caress or lick or kiss. Sadly, being small breasted, I bowed to society, feeling my mounds were mere hills not deserving of Mt Everest climbs. (Even I couldn’t believe my sometime playmate in the late 90’s, John DeG___, who swore he got most excited when he saw a slim, small-breasted woman. He is the guy who creatively threaded my nips through CDs, in a kind of tech-art tassle, much better than twisting them in the old “radio knob dials” teen boys used to think was sophisticated. How we girls survive?)

Playright, performer and political activist Sherry Glaser’s exposing her breasts on the streets for decency’s sake. Her one-woman play Oh My Goddess opens this week in San Francisco. And her Breasts not Bombs Campaign picketed this past Friday outside the Oakland Military Recruitment Center, in support of GI Suzanne Swift’s refusal to return to Iraq in the face of sexual abuse that she experienced in the military. Five women bared bosoms and none of the attending cops arrested them. (A case of breasts arresting cops?)

Sherry’s been in front of the White House and in a bunch of other states, is seeking legal action against one of her arrests, and plans many more protests.

From the SF Chronicle:

Glaser is on a mission to use her activism and her art -- and even her naked torso if need be -- to draw attention onstage and off to how our society has lost its way on the road to equality, dignity and true decency. ...."Two of my friends were threatened with arrest for indecent exposure after taking off their shirts and dancing topless during Mendocino's Fourth of July parade two years ago," Glaser says. "Their bare breasts were called 'indecent', so I thought, let's use this incident and our equal protection under the 14th Amendment to show what real freedom and decency look like."

from various other sources:

Breats Not Bombs mottos:
Titties Not Tanks
Mammaries Not Missiles
Nipples Not Napalm
The issue is Soft Tissue

“…the founding mothers intended the 2nd amendment to be
the right to bare breasts, not the right to bear
arms. They knew that if women were safe to walk bare breasted that we would all
be much safer,”says Glaser.

Sounds good to me. We’ll all just need to get some more sun block. Happy Ninety-Four Days of Topless Summer (minus 4 days and nights already gone)!