FREE THE NIPPLE

I caught up with Mickey, an active member of the Free the Nipple movement in Brighton to find out what it’s all about…

Can you tell us a bit about the Free the Nipple movement?

Free the Nipple is a movement dedicated to the simple belief that women should have full autonomy over their bodies – and in our case we focus on gaining equality for our nipples! You could say our “Free The Nipple” tagline is just an eye catching slogan to act as an umbrella for the hundreds of female body shaming issues women face not only around the world, but within our own – apparently liberated – Western society. Currently within the UK women are demonised simply for showing a bit of nipple, having too much of a short skirt, flashing a little too much flesh than what is deemed acceptable and this just falls hand in hand with the rape culture of “well, she was asking for it.” This irony is shown best under the tree of the male gaze as it is perfectly fine for a woman to have her nipples and breasts out when being exploited – such as is porn or page three – yet if she wants to take ownership of her body, dress and sexuality she is subject to vilification and sometimes assault – this only goes to verify that women are still not allowed to take rights over their own bodies and definitely not their own sexuality. Further on from this we believe it as one of our biggest goals to make sure no woman has to sit in a gallery of breast-centric art and still be told her breast feeding is disturbing for the guests of the institute #ironyatitsbest. Breast feeding is one of our biggest passions and the fact that breasts are designed to feed only goes to show how stupid this whole obsession with them being covered is!

How did you get involved? How many of there are you that organise events?

I first came on board last year, when I saw a post asking for a photographer to come photograph the march. At the time, Bee & Suze were leading the organisation, helped massively by Rachel, Roni, Dani, Lottie, Beckah and Dory. Currently, we have the same team and we're all just dedicated volunteers, but as the Brighton movement is growing we're starting to ask partners and friends to be involved for the actual march day, plus the police and venues! It's going to be a fab day!  

You’re from the Brighton branch, do you know how many others there are around the globe? 

Yeah that's right, we're from the Brighton Branch and there are quite a few affiliates around the world. The women who originally started FTN are from New York and even now we know of FTN groups getting together and marching in Scotland and dotted about in the U.K. One of the main things we see, rather than branches like ourselves, are passionate individual protesters all around the globe. With how social media is working these days, you only have to type #freethenipplemovement to see thousands upon thousands of people getting behind us! Also, it's worth noting that #freethenipple by itself started to become a reason for removal of photos on Instagram and Facebook, because you know, when a woman wants to have the right to her own body, the patriarchy gotta' try and bring you down hey?

Have you received any negative responses either online or at your events, and how do you cope with that?

At our last Free the Nipple march there were some guys who arrived and pretend to be documenting the event but their aim was actually to make a “mocumentary” which sadly some of our protesters fell victim for. After we (rightly) told them to f*** off – they uploaded their video of which there were some vile comments full of misogyny and disgraceful rape culture narrative underneath. Our opinion on this is to laugh, now and then we like to wind up trollers a bit by taking the piss – personally, we find it really fun when someone wants to out themselves as being an ignoramus, so we let them crack on. Thankfully though, we don't have a lot of issues with trolling at all.

Why do you think it’s important that we, as feminists, take a stand on this issue? 

I think FTN is a really important movement to get involved with as it highlights that we are still brainwashed in believing women within the West are equal. If we're supposed to be showing how women should live – in a free and liberated society – yet we're giving bralettes to our seven year olds and instantly letting them realise they are a sexual object and different to their male peers, are we no better than an ideology asking women to cover up so that men don't get aroused and sexually harm? Some cultures may be more blatant in their misogyny and we are extremely lucky to live where we live, but just because we have made this much progress it doesn't mean we have to stop. It's so funny to me when I have female friends telling me they don't believe in feminism anymore, “anymore?!” I say. When you realise sexualization of any body part goes hand in hand with the current Harvey Weinstein rape culture we are epidemically part of right now, then as a feminist you have to decide to tackle every single measure of inequality, or, like how we've magnified one issue – magnify your own issue, yet be supportive and proud of your fellow feminists highlighting another. 

You’ve got a big march coming up, what will that involve? Is freeing the nipple a must or can you just come along in support?

So our March on the 7th of July, will be about 45 minutes long. We've made the route wheelchair/buggy accessible and after reading some feedback from last years march we're going to take it at a slower pace. The March is always a fantastic day! First of all we will all meet at 2pm on The Old Steine Gardens to settle in, get to know one another, have some body paints done (by our resident female body painter Dani.) Then we will take down to the seafront at 3pm, with music, banners and chants all to say F*** you, to inequality!! We really want to make sure the message is loud and clear that 

no participant has to have their nipples free'd if they don't want to. As FTNB is all about giving autonomy to women over their bodies the last thing we would ever want to do is stipulate the removal of clothing – that would be as horrendous as telling a woman to cover up! We also want more nervous participants to know that we on the team have all at some point or another suffered with anxiety and mental health and for this reason we will have a dedicated team marked with balloons to turn to if anyone feels the march is getting all too much, or if they believed anyone was being inappropriate. We had a very safe, loving and peaceful march last year and this year, as it's getting bigger, we are asking for police escorting too (yet to be confirmed). We would welcome any one to write in if they have any anxieties, questions or concerns. We will finish the march at Pop-Up Brighton where you can get changed, have refreshments. Then at 8pm our after party hosted by the fantastic Traumfrau will start – which again you are free to free your nips or not! 

Does the collective put on other workshops or projects throughout the year?

This year, what was fantastic is we were asked to do a workshop for International Women's day at the Brighton Dome. This workshop was an hour long and we're currently working on making it a bit longer. We decided to make it a “Protest Workshop.” As we found the FTNB march so liberating and detoxifying we wanted to speak to people about how they could express pain through protest – a safe but purging place to release. We got our participants to talk with us (if they wanted to) about issues they've felt in their lives around body-objectification. We all split into groups and tried to gain a deeper understanding of how even the smallest comment could make a persons journey in life extremely painful and we also tried to break down how it has been systematically indoctrinated into us to believe image is so important, when actually we believe it isn't. At the end of the workshop, all of this honest learning led to a protest chant in the middle of the Dome (I'm sure they wondered what the hell we were up to) and we encouraged our group to scream as loud as they could and get some of that pain and anger out. It went down a storm and we loved it – once the organisation of the march is over, we want to continue this educational side of Free the Nipple Brighton.

IF YOU WANT TO TAKE PART IN THE MARCH, THE DETAILS ARE-
Free the Nipple Brighton.

Saturday 7th July.

2pm – Meet at Old Steine Gardens.

3pm – March on Brighton Seafront.

4pm – Rally at Pop-up Brighton

8pm – Afterparty with Traumfrau.

Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

Contact us at Freethenipplebrighton.wordpress.com.