Fight Stigma of Female Nipples With This Top That Looks Like Boobs

Female nipples are so out right now. Instagram doesn’t want ’em. In most states, it’s still illegal to wave ’em around even though the same standards of decency don’t apply to men. And Facebook won’t let you link to ’em in photos because decency, The Children, the female body is the root of all sin, etc. But a growing chorus of women want to change that.

The “Free the Nipple” campaign, a loose consortium of mostly-women who want to be able to go topless on the internet or IRL without people getting all pearl-clutchy about it, has garnered some celebrity support and a wildly successful Instagram hashtag. And now it’s got a shirt to wear in protest. Called the “Ta-Ta Top,” the bikini-style bralet is printed, simply, with a pretty damn realistic image of a nipple that sits exactly where a person’s nipple normally would be. But the point of the Ta Ta Top isn’t to titillate (pun intended), but rather to normalize. Here’s Salon with more on that,

…the Ta-Ta Top was designed by two feminist ladies, Robyn Graves and Michelle Lytle, and is meant to make the sight of the female anatomy something ordinary — like, oh, say, the male nipple. Better yet, $5 from every $28 purchase goes towards Lynn Sage Cancer Research Foundation, a breast cancer charity. Hopefully, as Lytle told Salon, when people are confronted with the Ta Ta Top, it won’t be a “big deal when you see someone topless.”

Here’s how it works: you put it on and wear it around and if anyone is like, hey, stop doing that, you can’t have your boobs out here, simply explain, very calmly and rationally, officer, that in fact this thing that looks like a boob is actually just a shirt that looks like a boob and not an actual boob. I’m sure no authority figures would become even more enraged once they realize that they’ve been made fools of.

Anyway, and then a bunch of stuff happens and then women are allowed to breast feed in public without people acting like assholes about it. Or something.

The Ta Ta Top is available online. Like many aspects of modern-day feminism, right now, this one’s only available to women with light skin and disposable income. But the inventors of the Ta Ta Top promise that more colors are coming soon.