Topless in New York City

After reading the title for this blog post, I’m sure that many of you who will end up reading this are thinking, “What the heck is she talking about?”  Well, the title is exactly what I’m talking about.  Imagine walking around all day in New York City–one of the busiest cities in the entire world with your top off in public.  Or rather, how would you feel if you were walking around the city and you saw a woman just chilling with her breasts hanging out?  Now, that’s definitely got to be something to get people talking.

Recently, I was watching the Tyra Show where Tyra Banks interviewed a special guest, Jordan Matter.  Jordan Matter spent over six years photographing over one hundred women in New York City with their tops off.  When Tyra first introduced him, I automatically assumed that he had to be smoking hot to get a hundred women to go topless for him, but soon found out that these women all volunteered to do this.  They ranged in ages as young as twenty-one to women who were old enough to be our great-grandmothers. The women all came from different backgrounds with different professions, education, and races, but one thing they all had in common–they wanted to empower other women.

Some of these women were having body image issues, some of them had breast cancer, and some of them just allowed him to take the pictures for the heck of it.  Jordan Matter wanted these women to feel a sense of “self-acceptance,” courage and pride while they were being shot half-naked, which is legal in New York.

Tyra had some of these women come to her show to share their stories.  One woman who was photographed with her daughter, who was eighteen at the time, suffered from a mild form of breast cancer and so in order to commemorate those who died from breast cancer and those who are still suffering from it, she wanted to do this.  However, she was unable to do it alone and so her daughter knew how much it meant to her and finally gave in to volunteer with her mother.  Another woman talked about being overweight ever since she was a little girl going through puberty.  She had been mocked and teased because of her weight and so she joined Matter’s movement to prove to everyone that she is comfortable with who she is.

I feel that this is the most moving form of art that I’ve seen in a while.  Nowadays, women are complaining about how fat they are, their cellulite, their crooked noses, and small breasts, but Matter wants to empower women and make them feel good-flaws and all.  Even women as beautiful as Kim Kardashian are using Botox because they aren’t comfortable in their own skin, but Matter wants to show us that this can be avoided by simply loving yourself.

Matter also shares his motive behind creating this book of photographs, which is his wife.  His wife has had body image issues ever since he was dating her and he wanted to show her how beautiful he thought she was.  He says that it killed him every time he saw his wife putting herself down and he wanted all women in the world to embrace themselves.  (He even got his wife to participate)

Matter’s artwork has been featured on the Tyra Show, on NBC news, and many other talk shows because it has caused social uproar.  Many people do not condone of these women being naked and don’t see the deeper meaning behind them taking their tops off.  However in my opinion, Matter chose the perfect medium to get his point across.

Women all over the world, no matter what race, size, shape, class, should all feel powerful and beautiful.