Boob Laws: An Analysis of Social Deviance within Gender, Families, or the Home (Etudes 2)
Carmen M. Cusack, Boob Laws: An Analysis of Social Deviance with in Gender, Family, or the Home (Etudes 2), _Women’s Rts. L. Reptr. _ (2012).
56 Pages Posted: 20 Feb 2013
Date Written: August 1, 2011
Abstract
State power is abused when municipalities classify male and female public indecency differently. This paper makes three different constitutional arguments to prove that municipalities that prohibit some females from exposing their nipples should be challenged on constitutional grounds. These arguments are 1) laws that prohibit some women from exposing their nipples but not men are unconstitutional under an equal protection analysis; 2) laws that allow women to breastfeed in public, but do not allow women who are not breastfeeding to bare their nipples impermissibly violate the right to privacy; and 3) laws that generalize the female nipple as the communicator of an erotic message may infringe on the First Amendment.
All powers not reserved by the federal government are given to the states and/or the people. The power to regulate and enforce morality has traditionally been a state power. When a state’s use of power infringes on any constitutional rights or federal power, the state’s law must be stricken or revised to eliminate this conflict. All constitutional rights granted by the federal government are available to the people and the residents of the states; these rights include equal protection, the right to privacy, and the right to free speech.
Keywords: criminalization, breasts, nipples, topless, topfree, lewd, modest, decency, indecency, transperson, gender equality, torso, chest
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