Woman Awarded $29,000 for Topless Stroll

When I was in high school, I ran for the Cross Country team in the Fall and then ran for the Track and Field Team in the Spring. Unlike other high schools, we did not have separate "Boys" and "Girls" teams - we didn't have enough students to support separate teams. As a result, many, if not all, of our practices were run co-ed.

It was nothing to see a group of us running down the road for practice; the girls in sports bras and short while the boys went topless. Yet I remember vividly my Sophomore year when someone complained and my group was arrested.

Well, the girls were anyway, for indecent exposure. For the boys, apparently, it was just fine to go running topless; but the girls had to wear more than sports bras to go running in 90 degree weather under 80% humidity.

That was when I realized that much of America was far to highstrung and uptight about nudity (or semi-partial-quasi-nudity) in public. That was also when I realized that it seemed unfair that the boys were left alone while the rest of us were escorted to the police station, lectured about the "image we were portraying" and forced to wait while our parents were called.

So I was rather glad to here that later on in the same year a state appeals court ruling in New York had concluded that women had just as much of a right to go topless as men; to me this meant that people were making progress.

Eh? Maybe not.

Jill Coccaro was arrested and held in custody for 12 hours after being stopped from walking topless.

Upon her release, Cuccaro (now going by the name "Phoenix Feeley") was told that prosecutors would not be pressing charges; and instead she pressed charges for police brutality, claiming that the officer pulled her from the car by her hair and then took her to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

Feeley has been awarded $29,000 in a civil rights settlement from the city (which claimed no wrongdoing).

Cases like this make me wonder if she should have been arrested at all? Well, obviously she shouldn't have according to the law...

On the one hand, I really wouldn't like it if my 5 year old niece was taught about her eventual breasts by seeing them on a topless jogger; but on the other hand, if the partial-nudity is not meant to intice any sort of sexuality or lustful emotions and is not being displayed in any sort of sexual manner, then what business is it of mine or anyone else's?

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