Hey Guys, It's Time For Us To STOP Freaking Out Over Naked Boobs

Guys, it’s time to free the nipple.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying that I want guys to show me their nipples. (They’re superfluous. Why would I want to see those useless things?) And I’m not advocating for ladies to show me their boobs in the traditional Spring Break/Mardi Gras fashion. (I don’t even have any plastic beads.) What I AM saying is…

Men, we have to stop freaking out about seeing a woman’s nipple.

It’s NOT a big deal.

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Sure, you may have friends who freak the eff out when Phoebe Cates’ boobs finally come out in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And organizations like Facebook might lose their shit if they detect that a photograph even has a hint of a woman’s nipple. But just because old entrenched masculinity and dumb corporate values have a problem with nipples, that doesn’t mean that it’s OK.

Remember back in June when that video of a man screaming at a woman for breastfeeding at Target went viral? How does something like that happen in this day and age? Does that man scream at fire and all the iron birds that fly over the airport every day? How can he possibly equate a woman feeding her baby with something SEXUAL?

It is insane that, in 2016, a good one year AFTER Marty McFly traveled into the future and encountered flying cars, that men catching sight of a boob is something that’s still considered “controversial.”

There’s even a whole social movement called FREE THE NIPPLE that’s dedicated to fighting the hypocrisy of how modern society treats male and female “indecency.” And, by “indecency,” I mean, that a woman can go to jail for having her shirt off in public and a man can’t. This all occurs because we’ve sexualized the female nipple to such a ridiculous degree that even SEEING one is considered a crime.

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And, as the dad of a daughter, I find that RIDICULOUS.

I have lived through watching my wife breastfeed, both privately and publicly. I’ve seen my own daughter grow, from the age when her physical form was completely indistinguishable from her male classmates to more recent times, when training bras are common among her age group.

I just DO NOT GET why people view lady nipples as something private or criminal.

Because, here’s the thing, women’s nipples ACTUALLY DO THINGS.

They’re useful. They serve a purpose. Mankind would not have survived without women’s nipples.

However, in Western society, they’ve somehow been reduced to something lewd and secretive.

A television network can be fined millions of dollars for the briefest glimpse of a nipple. Services like Instagram can host pictures showing some of the dumbest, sickest things possible, but just a hint of a nipple is considered a violation of their terms and services.

And I get it to a certain extent. I was raised to treat the female nipple as a sacred, sexual thing. When Jamie Lee Curtis took her top off in Trading Places, it was someone slapped me in the face, like I’d been unexpectedly admitted into some kind of underground sex club that I never knew existed.

Cut to 20 years later as I watch my wife breastfeeding my shirtless baby daughter and I wonder how anyone could’ve ever reduced such a beautiful, natural feature into a shameless sex button.

It needs to stop.

Seriously, dudes, why do we care so much about women’s nipples?

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Men jog shirtless ALL THE TIME. Actually too much. We get it, dudes. You’re not that hot. Taking off your tank-top DID NOT significantly cool down your body during your long, sweaty run.

Male nipples are EVERYWHERE. Even King Triton from The Little Mermaid rocked out-and-proud male nipples and never once did Ariel avert her eyes. (Fun Fact — the shirtless men in Pocahontas don’t have nipples and it’s SUPER odd.)

Men’s nipples are much, MUCH weirder than women’s nipples.

So — dudes, dads, corporate executives, law enforcement personnel, Mark Zuckerberg — we need to move past this, OK?

Can we please Free the Nipple and allow women to decriminalize an essential part of their own bodies?

If you can’t handle seeing a woman’s nipple without giggling or getting an instant erection, trust me, the problem is with YOU, not them.