MANCHESTER, NH — Northern exposure is all over the news right now, and it has nothing to do with the climate — unless you’re talking about the sexist tension going on at the NH State House.
New Hampshire continues to struggle with efforts here to “free the nipple,” as Manchester State Rep. Amanda Bouldin is now making international headlines for her opposition to a proposed bill that would legislate a woman’s right to uncover her breasts.
HB 1525-FN is sponsored by GOP State Reps. Brian Gallagher, Peter Spanos, George Hurt, and Josh Moore, would amend the state’s public indecency, indecent exposure, and lewdness laws to include the following clause:
“[A person is guilty of a misdemeanor if:] Such person purposely exposes his or her anus, or if a woman, purposely exposes the areola or nipple of her breast or breasts in a public place and in the presence of another person with reckless disregard for whether a reasonable person would be offended or alarmed by such act… This section shall not apply to the act of breast-feeding.”
State law currently does not directly prohibit a woman from showing her breasts in public.
The Internet buzz being generated this week isn’t about Bouldin’s vocal opposition to the sexist slant of the bill so much as it’s about the pushback she received from some of her male State House counterparts when she expressed her views via social media.
According to one of the many stories trending this week around the Internet, Bouldin posted a criticism of the bill on her Facebook page, calling the measure “a sexist betrayal of the GOP’s purported ‘smaller government’ principles,” according to coverage on Slate.com.
The crude responses that followed from some of her male colleagues underscored her point.
Moore, a bill sponsor, responded with a post that was later removed, but not before friends of Bouldin took a screen shot:
Moore went on to defend the bill as a way of protecting the innocence of women:
To which Bouldin responded:
And that thread evoked the following response from Londonderry State Rep. Al Baldasaro:
On Dec. 30 the Huffington Post reached Baldasaro by phone for comment, and he defended his statement by saying:
“I stand by what I said…. You’re damn right it would be the last one I want to see. I’m a happily married guy… She sits right in front of me at the State House.”
Baldasaro also told the publication he supports the anti-nudity bill because allowing women to expose their nipples on New Hampshire’s beaches would hurt tourism and cost the state money.
In an interview with Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, Bouldin said she sees the bill as a feminist issue, and plans to fight it in the coming legislative session.
“We shouldn’t be introducing new legislation that only applies to women,” she said. “If we had any laws that started with the sentence ‘women should not,’ they should have been repealed by now.”
On Dec. 29 Bouldin told Jezebel that New Hampshire doesn’t need a law to curb its nudity problem.
“We don’t have a nudity problem in New Hampshire… There’s not, like, hordes of topless women roaming the streets and assaulting people. Everyone wears their clothes in New Hampshire; it’s cold outside! There’s no issue, so this bill is pointless,” Bouldin said.
Aside from the Slate.com coverage, stories about the New Hampshire nipple controversy have been trending all over the Internet beyond local coverage, including posts on The Daily Mail, The Huffington Post, Jezebel, the New York Daily News, and Cosmopolitan, putting New Hampshire’s state legislators in the international spotlight.
Contacted Jan. 1, Bouldin noted that Moore’s State Rep Facebook page had been barraged with angry comments from people around the world, so much so that the ability to post directly on his page was apparently revoked. That didn’t stop some commenters from finding a way, by posting underneath unrelated posts:
Nipples first became a political hot potato here over the summer when the “Free the Nipple” movement manifested in a topless rally at Hampton Beach back in August. That drama continued in a New Hampshire courtroom on Dec. 28 when the constitutionality of a Gilford ordinance prohibiting women from going topless on the town beach came before a district court judge in Laconia.
The Hampton topless event was part of the national momentum described as “an equality movement aimed at the double standards regarding the sexualization and censorship” of female breasts, which was started by activist and filmmaker Lina Esco, maker of the 2014 film, “Free the Nipple.”
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