Ladies, now you can support the “Free The Nipple” movement and go topless while wearing a top.
In case you haven’t heard, Free The Nipple is one of the newest social movements that supports feminism and equality. In America, it is illegal for women to walk around without a shirt, but completely legal for men to do so. A Yahoo health article stated that women risk public lewdness and indecency laws solely for doing what men are entitled to everyday. Is that a double standard?
Michelle and Robyn Lytle, a married couple from Chicago, decided to create a bathing suit top that questions this double standard. The Tata Top is a bathing suit top with a photograph of breasts pictured on the front, though it doesn’t show any actual skin. Inspiration for the bathing suit came in the form of exchange students that the couple hosted from the Netherlands in 2012. When the Dutch girls went to the beach one hot summer day, the students had no idea their trip would include illegal activity: taking their tops off.
Because it’s legal to go shirtless in the Netherlands, the girls thought nothing of it in America. However, a lifeguard (who happened to be a shirtless male) told the girls they had to cover up, which confused the foreign girls even more, according to Mic.
Inspired by this exchange, the Lytles created the a bathing suit with purpose to “push the boundaries, make society question the social norms and dig a little deeper,” Lytle told Mic. It also has the added bonus of being able to “mess with these outdated laws and the authorities that enforce them.”
The bathing suit top shows a realistic photograph of breasts and comes in three colors (light, medium, and dark) and is completely legal. It costs about $30 and the Lytles are making a killing selling it.
[Featured Image Credit: devindobbinsphoto via Instagram]