Nantucket residents say they’re anxious at the prospect of topless bathers this summer.
Residents living in Nantucket are sharing their concerns with just months to go before the island allows women to go topless on the Massachusetts resort island’s beaches for the first time.
The Gender Equality on Beaches bylaw amendment passed 327-242 last May.
The bylaw ‘allows the space for all bodies, allowing anyone, no matter their gender to be topless’, starting this summer.
Previously, only men could go topless in public.
The state’s attorney general approved the measure stating: ‘We approve the Town’s vote authorizing any person to go topless on any public or private beach in Nantucket because we discern no conflict’ with the constitution.
Residents of Nantucket are expressing concerns after changes were made to allow women to go topless on the island’s beaches this summer. Local, Dorothy Stover, 41, is pictured
Local, Dorothy Stover, 41, proposed a change in the law there to allow anyone who chooses regardless of gender to go topless.
But residents who insist they are not prudish are not looking forward to the start of the summer season.
‘I don’t want the season to begin. It’s like having a free strip club. So many people didn’t vote for it,’ said Nantucket resident Beth Barry to the Mercury News.
Barry is so concerned about the island’s first topless summer that she wants to vote to be recast.
‘This drastically changes our community. How can it be every beach? I wasn’t able to vote from Boston,’ she complained.
The city has even admitted that there will be something of an adjustment period.
‘We ask everyone to be patient and respectful as the island adapts to this first-of-its-kind bylaw in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.’
The Gender Equality on Beaches bylaw amendment passed last May following a debate at the annual town meeting.
Stover put forward her proposal last year, pointing out that many communities already allow anyone who chooses to go topless on public beaches.
Stover described herself as an Intuitive Love Teacher and teaches classes online.
The island’s ‘Rules & Regulations’ site has all kinds of bylaws in place for fire pits, beach bonfires, noise, smoking and drinking – but topless sunbathing doesn’t get a mention.
The bylaw was proposed by seventh-generation Nantucket resident 41-year-old Dorothy Stover and reads in part: ‘In order to promote equality for all persons, any person shall be allowed to be topless on any public or private beach’ in town.
Stover said she felt that the state law which only allows men to take off their tops in public ‘was really antiquated.’
‘This past summer, I was at the beach and I wanted to lay out topless,’ she recalled to the Cape Cod Times. ‘And I thought, “Why can’t I do that?” Some men have bigger breasts than I do!’
Stover claims she was inspired after reading a cartoon.
‘I saw this comic strip that had a male and a woman that had the same exact body and they were both topless. The man said to the woman, “Look at you, you’re so indecent, how dare you?” And she replied back, “Look at me? look at you!” They had the same body, yet only one is allowed to be topless.’
Stover said that she felt that it was unfair she couldn’t take her top off, while men could
Stover told WBUR that she knows some people who are against the measure, but the overwhelming response has been positive.
Her hope is to normalize bodies of all shapes and sizes and foster an environment of acceptance, she said.
‘I’m not saying that everybody has to be topless,’ said Stover. ‘I want to support the love of the body.’
Stover pointed out that many communities already allow anyone who chooses to go topless on public beaches, The Boston Globe reported.
‘Nantucket has a history of fighting for equality,’ she added.
Close-up of a pair of young women in bikinis as they sunbathe on deckchairs above the sand at the Cliffside Beach Club, Nantucket, Massachusetts, August 1957