city weighs allowing women to go topless in public

  FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Officials in this city of 150,000 residents are considering changes to their ordinance on public nudity that would permit women to go topless in public.

The proposal is in response to requests from residents who say the current ordinance discriminates against women. City law does not prohibit men from appearing in public without shirts.

At one point in August when the temperature was about 20 degrees warmer than Tuesday's 66-degree high, Brittiany Hoagland, 24, stood on a busy street corner in Fort Collins, about 65 miles north of Denver, wearing a bikini and a placard across her chest: "Illegal to remove."

For her it's simple: Colorado's Constitution prohibits denying equal rights on account of sex. If men may go bare chested in public legally, so should women.

"So targeting females or males or anything in between is, quite frankly, unconstitutional," she said then. "I think that is blatantly clear."

Her initial protest was tied to an international Go Topless Day on Aug. 23 and the Free the Nipple campaign, publicized in a movie released late last year.

While a majority of states don't have prohibitions against women baring their breasts in public, some cities within those states have enacted ordinances specifically restricting women's bared breasts, according to the Las Vegas-based nonprofit GoTopless.org. Exposing the breast or breasts of a female is one of the definitions of public indecency in Fort Collins' ordinance.

Women in New York state have been able to bare their breasts legally in public since 1996 after the state's Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of women arrested in 1986 inRochester, N.Y., according to the organization.

Hoagland said she is glad Fort Collins is considering a change to its law.

"It's over 70 years old. So much has changed in 70 years," Hoagland said. "Fort Collins is relatively progressive. Women deserve to have equality. Their bodies are not to be owned by anybody else, and we should always be on equal terms."

Fort Collins' proposal, which is scheduled to be discussed at the City Council's Oct. 20 meeting, is expected to have two options:

• Maintain the current policy that does not allow women to be topless in public but add an exception for breastfeeding mothers.

• Allow women to be topless in public.

Among cities where court cases have decided women's right to go topless, according to GoTopless.org: Asheville, N.C.; Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colo., about 50 miles southwest of Fort Collins; Honolulu; Madison, Wis.; Portland, Ore.; Santa Fe, N.M.; and the District of Columbia.