"... where no one knows who is Zooming pants-less and intimate selfies are the equivalent of a Tumblr hello. Seen in that light, underwear on Fifth Avenue was probably always a logical endpoint in a progressive blurring of distinctions between public and private. Or so I imagined until an afternoon last week when, glancing up from my Harvest Bowl at Sweetgreen, I spotted through the window a young woman casually crossing Astor Place wearing a pair of cutoffs, some sandals and — it is fully legal to do this — naked above the waist."
That's the end of this long, lavishly illustrated NYT "critic's notebook" piece by Guy Trebay, "Suddenly It’s Bare Season Bras in the parks, skivvies on Fifth Avenue: Is this the logical endpoint of increasingly blurred distinctions between public and private?"
When I first saw this article yesterday, I thought the NYT was gratuitously splashing its pages with pictures of scantily covered breasts. This morning, looking for a morsel of text to cut and display here, I thought it was all pretty funny — "morality’s prairie dress," "Zooming pants-less," "underwear on Fifth Avenue."
I was chuckling over the gratuitousness, not of the breasts, but of "my Harvest Bowl at Sweetgreen." If morality wears a prairie dress, surely, morality eats a harvest bowl.
(Speaking of gratuitous, why capitalize Harvest Bowl? I could understand the capitalization if it was a frozen dinner in a box. Or a football game.)
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3 comments:
Brian writes:
"So Professor? Please Tell us! On the (your) scheme of things,
where does women walking topless compare to men in shorts?
"OH! Also, how does it relate to Sand Volleyball uniforms?
thanx!"
I'd say:
In the city, both men and women should wear tops. And a bra is an insufficient top. The notion that a bra is a good way to deal with the heat is delusional. Wear a loose, lightweight, sleeveless or short sleeved top and don't wear a bra at all. That would be more cooling than just going out in your bra. Some bralettes are the equivalent of halter tops, and on some women, it can make an okay top.
Leora writes:
"I once had a conversation with a woman born in 1898 and I asked her how dresses went from ankle length to above the knee when she was in her 20’s. She said it was just the fashion."
And she sends this amazing Life Magazine illustration from 1914.
Lucien writes:
"Just because a shirtless individual is a “person with breasts” that doesn’t mean one ought to jump to conclusions about their gender identity.
Pretty darned microaggressively transphobic, if you ask me. (Are halter tops related to horsiculture?)"
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