Columbus Circle to Bryant Park
Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza
Sunday, August 28, free, 11:00 am – 3:30 pm
raelusa.org
www.gotopless.org
“Free your breasts! Free your mind!” Sunday, August 28, is GoTopless Day, in which women around the world will bare their breasts (and men will wear bikini tops) in celebration of Women’s Equality Day (August 26) and to further protest for gender equality. Parades and rallies are being held all over America; you can find the one closest to you on the BoobMap, but pay attention to local laws so you don’t end up getting fined and/or arrested. Here in New York City, it is legal for anyone and everyone to take their top off as long as the police don’t determine they’re participating in disorderly conduct (which would have to involve more than just marching in a topless parade, asserting one’s rights). People will start gathering at eleven o’clock at West Fifty-Eighth St. between Eighth and Ninth Aves., and the parade will begin at one o’clock, making its way toward Bryant Park. Then, from two to four, the GoTopless Rally for Freedom will take place at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza at Second Ave. and Forty-Seventh St., where you can keep it off for topless pride. “As long as men are allowed to be topless in public, women should have the same constitutional right. Or else, men should have to wear something to hide their chests,” explains Maitreya Rael, the French singer-songwriter, race-car driver, and founder of gotopless.org who also leads the Raelian Movement, which believes in atheistic intelligent design, claiming that all forms of life on Earth were created by scientists from another planet. There’s no information on whether the extraterrestrial scientists, including the one Rael met in December 1973, were topless or not.