People around the world are using nudity as a form of protest
Nudity
Nudity is mostly seen as something that happens at home after a long day of work or school; however, nudity can be used as a form of protest. Nudity can be used as a tactic during a protest in order to attract public attention to a particular cause. People strip themselves off their clothing in order to portray how, in a similar way, they have been stripped off their political power or rights. By using their naked body to protest against power, protestors are emphasizing that power cannot be simply opposed by the presence of masses of people, but that those people have to be willing to expose the corporeal fragility and juxtapose it with the brutality of war machines or the tyranny of a government. “It is with this intention, that ‘nudity is strategically employed as a mode of social and political action.’” Nudity and/or the act of removing clothes is not what makes nudity a meaningful form of protest, but stripping down demonstrates a person willingness and, therefore, their purposeful vulnerability. Nudity is an effective form of protest because it helps protestors portray their demands as something that need to be taken seriously and something that is urgent and need to be resolved.
Recently, people around the world are using their bodies to protest against what they believe is oppressing them. Men and women are going out to the streets nude in order to show their discontent with the laws and government or religious officials who are not looking out for their needs and/or rights. Specifically, women are becoming more attached to idea of using their bodies to protest not only because their nudity brings more attention to their causes, but because their nudity is the first step to regaining control over their bodies.
Rio de Janeiro Goes Nude
On November of 2015 topless, feminist protestors took the streets of Rio de Janeiro portraying their worries about the “horrific violence against women” that takes place in Brazil. In the city’s fifth annual SlutWalk, around 200 to 3000 protestors took the street of Rio de Janeiro in order to protest against the sexual violence in the country and the sexist bill that would require women who choose to have an abortion to provide evidence that they had been raped. In Brazil, abortion is only legal in case of a rape or when a pregnancy possesses a danger to the woman’s life. The new bill, introduced by the speaker of Brazil’s Lower House, Eduardo Cunha, requires a woman seeking for an abortion to provide proof of being raped before they have an abortion. The Brazilian protestors were protesting this bill and the fact that women in Brazil, like in other countries, are constantly been blame for their own rape on the grounds that their behavior or the way they dress apparently encourages the assault. Protestors inscribed messages on their naked backs, stomachs, arms, and breast to describe their strong discontent with the continuation of sexual violence towards women and the bills and laws that “eliminate any doubt that a rape was committed.” They demanded their voice to be heard because the protestors refused to go back to the earlier times in Brazil where women were seen as delicate and inferior creatures. Brazilians knew that in order for their voice to be hear they had to do something more than just gather in masses, but they had to put their bodies into their cause to stop the continuation of sexual violence. By exposing that which supposedly provokes men to assault women, their bodies, the Brazilian women were taking power over their bodies and showing men, like Eduardo Cunha, that women are not objects and shall not continue to be seeing as one, for they have the ability to whatever they please with their bodies without fearing they would be harass.
“We’ve made a lot of gains, we’re not going to give up now, we’re not going to just shut up and take it…” (Indara Costa, 18-year-old Brazilian protestor)
Quebec Students Strip Down to Stop the Increase on Tuition
In 2012 Quebec students decided to strip off their clothes and take the streets of Montreal to protest against Quebec’s proposal to raise tuition. Protestors decided to strip down to their underwear at the Palace Emilie-Gamelin Park even after the police warned them that they would not tolerate nudity. Most of the women participants were topless and they used red paint, red squares, and other means to cover their breasts to avoid arrest for exposure. These student protestors were stripping down in order to show the government they have been “transparent in their demands to freeze tuition fees, to garner more media attention to their cause,” and to discourage the local police form handling the march in a violent manner. However, the police used tear gas, pepper spray, and batons to try and stop the march, eventually about 40 participants were arrested. The police claimed that the arrest had to take place because the participants were preparing to commit crimes and damage private property, but they real reason behind these arrests was that the participants were intimidating the police and the public with their partial nudity. Some senior citizens shook their heads when they saw the students naked while other people in restaurants and on the street just looked on and in some cases clapped and hooted at the students in support. As a result of the students’ partial nudity, the newly elected Premier Pauline Marois said that “government was ending the tuition hike proposal and nullifying Bill 78” which was an emergency law that was design restrain protests, like the one the Quebec students organized. The protestors in Quebec used their bodies to show their opposition to the government’s proposal to increase tuition and by using their bodies they grabbed the governments attention and as a result their demand was heard and the tuition raised was stopped before it took place.
“Tout nu dehors, jusqu’a la victoire.”
The Discontent Women of Sierra Leone Get Naked
In 2016 the women in Sierra Leone got semi-naked to show their discontent with the religious leaders’ opposition to the “new safe abortion bill.” The controversial abortion bill seek to supersede the previous, precolonial law that makes it illegal for anyone to have or conduct an abortion. This bill purpose was to prevent many women and girls from undergoing an unsafe abortion that ultimately leads them to their death; therefore, the law will have allowed women to terminated their pregnancy within 12 weeks without any reason. However, the bill was not signed into law by the president, Ernest Bai Koroma, because the religious leaders of Sierra Leone were against the bill; therefore, the president didn’t want to go against their appeal and he decided not to be signed into law. As a result, a group of women disrupted the meeting the religious leaders were having in regard to the bill and “strip naked” in order to show their discontent with their decision, for these religious men were taking a decision on woman’s body, a body which they do not have, and therefore do not understand. The women’s decision to strip off their clothes demonstrated their desire to regain control over their own body; they wanted to show the religious leaders that they would not possess no more power over their bodies and that women had the power to do with their bodies whatever they please. These women are fed up with the fact that the religious leaders always seemed to be blind to the problems that directly affected women and their offspring and now these leaders decided to speak up in order “to please their European, Saudi Arabia and American religious funders.” The women in Sierra Leone see the abortion pill as something urgent and necessary and they think that religious leaders should not be the ones to decide whether or not a woman should undergo an abortion. They wanted to have their demands taken into consideration; therefore, they use more than chants to show their discontent, they also used their bodies to demonstrate that they would not sit back and let these religious men, along with the president, decide over their bodies and their well-being.
People all over the world are tired of using the same forms of protests that involved posters and masses which sometimes don’t work to get a point across. Instead people are using their bodies and going nude in order to show their discontent with the different problems that are taking place in the various countries around the world. Women are the main group of protestors who are using nudity to protest against issues that involved their bodies. They are also using nudity to proclaim their ownership and power over their own bodies. Nudity is not something that should be censor when it comes to protest. Nudity should be accepted, for those who use nudity as a form of protest are only doing it because they want their voices to be hear and they want to see changes in the world.
