Spain is urging women to swim topless to ‘fight discrimination’

Want to fight gender discrimination? Go topless! That is the message the authorities in Catalonia in mainland Spain, are conveying to women in the region as part of a new campaign aimed at putting an end to the sexualization of the female body. Catalonia’s Department of Equality and Feminism has produced an ad promoting women’s right to swim topless in public pools after some complained that they had been prohibited from doing so.

“The sexualization of women starts when they are young, and it accompanies us all our lives. That we must cover up our breasts in some spaces is proof,” declares the video that premiered on their Twitter account last week.

The campaign also highlights the double standard in modern society, which gives men a pass for going bare-chested outdoors but shames women for doing the same.

To drive this point home, the commercial shows a man’s bare torso, with a superimposed text that reads: “This nipple is free,” followed by a photo of a topless woman covering her breasts with her hands, accompanied by the caption: “this one is not.”

Neus Pociello, executive director for the Catalan Women’s Institute says, that the goal of the campaign is to stamp out gender-based discrimination. “We wanted to try to combat the discrimination that women suffer sometimes when they go topless in some situations like swimming pools. Women should have the right to freedom of expression with their bodies.”

Throughout Spain, women are allowed to go topless on public beaches, but local governments are free to make their own rules when it comes to municipal pools. The same goes for private swimming pools.

Catalonia’s pro-topless swimming initiative comes on the heels of a controversy that was sparked by a summer ad campaign that was launched by Spain’s government, encouraging older and plus-size women to hit the beach.

The ads featuring slogans like “all bodies are beach bodies” and “summer is ours, too” caused a backlash from critics who labelled them patronizing, and caused complaints from models whose images had been used without permission, including one who had had her prosthetic leg airbrushed out.