I’m a teen victim of sexual harassment and here’s why Free The Nipple matters to me

Ed. note: This post was originally published on the Community site.

In December 2014, three female friends and I decided to have a winter photo shoot. I chose not to wear a bra beneath my dress — silly me, a 16-year-old girl prioritizing her personal comfort over misogynistic cultural norms? Ridiculous. At any rate, I liked the way the photos turned out: seven months later, I still do. One night, a few days after Christmas, I decided to change my Facebook profile picture. That was the night I learned that despite my rights to access contraceptives or obtain an abortion, in 21st century western society, my body was still not my own. Whether or not I actively chose to sexualize myself, whether or not I consented to being sexualized — the choice wasn’t mine to make. Society long ago deemed my nipples perverted, pornographic instruments of sexuality because by some great misfortune they happened to attach themselves to a girl instead of a boy. Sure, it was my body, but I still had zero say in the matter.

Within minutes of updating my profile picture, I received messages from more than seven people, either feigning or — even more disappointingly — expressing genuine concern. I found it in me to politely answer each time that yes, I was aware of what the photos showed, and no, it wasn’t a “dress malfunction.” I stood — and stand — by the simple fact that there was no sexual intent behind the photos, and if people chose to sexualize me, that was more a testament to their characters than to mine. I maintained my resolve because I knew I was right; I was a feminist and I had long ago chosen to open my mind beyond patriarchal double standards. However, even the support of my close-knit feminist friends didn’t prevent me from feeling absolutely mortified by events that followed.

Nearly every day for months, I had to hear from multiple peers about immature boys circulating pictures of me from the photo shoot like pornography. I had to resist the urge to march to the principal’s office and report my experiences because, ultimately, I had no proof. One of them outright told me I was a “slut” and “whore,” claiming it was his responsibility to tell me. Most alarming of all, he called the photos of me “nudes.” I remember the exact words he used: “Remember when you literally posted nudes online? They made everyone want to throw up.”

Actually, I didn’t remember “literally [posting] nudes online” — I remembered being tagged in photos of me, fully clothed in a beautiful black dress. The fact that to people like him the very imprint of my nipples transformed fully clothed photos into “nudes” was alarming to me. It made no sense to me that I was labeled a “slut” for baring the imprint of my nipples, while my male peers were “hot” for taking photos completely topless.

He went on to spread disgusting rumors that I had sent him nude photos and that I was posting more online. At this stage, I reached my breaking point and was armed with proof of his harassment after he sent me degrading Facebook messages. I reported him by myself, and later found out he received only a warning for calling me disgusting misogynistic names, lying about my character, and aggressively sexualizing me without my consent. He would only receive disciplinary action if he acted out a second time, I learned, because apparently, he couldn’t have known his perverted actions were faulty without gentle explanation from an authority figure.

So, while it was entirely fair to expect a 17-year-old boy to inherently have no moral compass, it was unimaginable that a 16-year-old girl should seek respect and justice after publicly revealing the outlines of her nipples. This “treatment” remained true to our hopelessly misogynistic culture: We consistently fail to realize that the fault and perversion lay not with the female body, but with the way we, as a society, look at and portray it.

I struggled to reach my decision to get my parents involved. When I recounted the events and showed the evidence to my conservative, zealously religious mother, I received an expected hours-long lecture on how, if I didn’t want to be sexually harassed, I shouldn’t have let those “shameful” photos of myself surface in the first place. After she finished lecturing, she refused to go to the office without my dad, and so we struggled to determine a way to approach him so that he wouldn’t be furious with me. Ultimately, I understand it’s unreasonable to hold my parents completely accountable for their often misogynistic views. Their views reflect a past generation — my concern lies not with their generation, but with mine. At any rate, the assertive involvement of my parents in obtaining justice for me inspired further disciplinary action to be taken.

You can trust me when I tell you that by the time these events transpired, long before I changed my profile picture, I was in no way new to being sexually harassed. I established my own sense of fashion by my freshman year in high school. The clothes that I felt confident in were the same clothes that rendered me a “slut,” “hoe,” and “attention-whore” to those who knew nothing about me, and even those who did. Because, ultimately, if you’re female, this is what it comes down to: You can work two jobs to pay for your “slutty” clothes, study hard, have incredible grades, write award-winning history papers, and be kind and compassionate to everyone you meet. But if you have the audacity to wear clothes that you feel confident in, show whatever you feel confident showing, then you are a “slut” and none of your other achievements, nothing else about you matters even a little bit.

However, there is a reason why, of all the times I’ve been sexually harassed, this incident stood out to me and inspired me to hand over my unwavering support to the Free The Nipple campaign. In other cases, when I protested being called a “slut” for my fashion choices, people understood my frustration. But in this specific case, I was treated like a crazy, out-of-line radical for protesting the sexualization of my nipples. I don’t think people have given this issue enough thought and are too quick to dismiss women who try to reclaim their bodies as “attention whores.” I should not have been slut-shamed for being a woman who made her comfort a higher priority than patriarchal social customs.

Free The Nipple matters so much to me because, ultimately, it concerns the overarching concepts that connect every women’s rights issue: consent and choice. Sexualizing women (and their nipples) when they do not consent to being sexualized may not have the same physical implications as rape, but it is still sexual violation, and it is still dehumanizing and degrading. As the owner of her body, a woman should be the only one who gets to decide if she wants her body sexualized. When she sexualizes herself or is sexualized willingly, that is empowerment; when she is sexualized against her will, that is objectification and a form of sexual violation that any moral society shouldn’t tolerate.

Last but not least, I leave all feminists with this: If you don’t support Free The Nipple – why don’t you? Because going topless in public isn’t safe for women? I say to that, why do we place the public safety burden on women, and not men? Why does our culture prefer to shame women rather than demand that men control themselves? As for any other argument you might have, remember that feminism is fundamentally about empowering all people, not merely heterosexual white males, with the ability to make their own peaceful lifestyle choices. Why do men have the option of going out topless free of social taboo, while women don’t? Women and girls should be wearing shirts and bras because they want to, not due to fear of sexual harassment and sexual violation.

Frankly, no woman should experience the degradation I had to endure for choosing comfort.