61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Nerve's videogame blog: Street Fighter. The movie. A new one. With that chick from that Superman show. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Mad Men's January Jones struts her stuff in Vanity Fair. Plus: Damages returns, the latest Gossip Girl guest star and Donna Martin capitulates.
Two weeks ago, I left New York's baking summer heat and headed North to the theoretically cooler climate of my hometown, Toronto, only to find that when I arrived, the mercury was cracking 102 degrees. I stopped by the house of a friend of mine for a cold beer, and as we sat on the stoop bathed in sweat, his middle-aged female neighbor came out to water the lawn — topless.
"She does this about two or three times a summer," he explained, as we watched her nonchalantly spool out the hose, her largish breasts wrinkled and pale under the blistering sun. Two cops floated by in a car; one of them pointed out the window and laughed. Nobody, it appeared, really gave a shit.
I've lived in the U.S. for three years, and I've learned from bitter experience — plus countless jibes at cocktail parties — that free-wheeling exhibitionism is not what comes to mind when Americans think about Canada. Hockey, the bleak moonscape of the prairies, Rush's "Fly By Night," sure. Cheerfully unself-conscious self-exposure, not so much. Hell, in Saskatchewan in December, your spit'll freeze before it hits the ground. Forget about letting it all hang out; shouldn't my countrymen be covering it all up?
Sort of. Except that despite its reputation for sub-arctic chill, Canada has, over the years, developed a surprisingly vibrant topless culture during the summers. It's subtler than the bold nudity of Brazil or Belgium, but more endearingly quirky. In fact, after a series of energetic legal battles in the '90s, Canadian women won the right to strip down in public to the bare essentials — from the waist up, anyway. I'm not talking about nude beaches; I'm talking about the downtown financial core, the shopping mall, the church parking lot. When you whip 'em out in Toronto, you're not just coping with the heat — you're enjoying a legally sanctioned activity that was hard-fought-for by a startlingly well-organized lobby. Indeed, that lobby exists to this day in the form of the charmingly earnest Federation of Canadian Nudists.
Canada even has its own topless political martyr: a teenager named Gwen Jacobs who is the Rosa Parks of Canadian nudism.
It all began back on July 19, 1991, when Jacobs was a nineteen-year-old student at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The temperature had risen to a sweltering 104 degrees, and Jacobs — a smart, outspoken feminist — was getting deeply pissed that so many men were able to take their tops off. So on the way back home from class, she decided to take hers off too, sauntering through the suburban 'hood half-naturel. A local mother freaked out and called the cops, and the next day when Jacobs walked home again topless, an officer handed her a ticket for "indecency."
"You're exposing your genitals," he warned her.
Thus began a singularly mutilated public debate that lasted for five long years. Jacobs took the ticket to court, and an unsympathetic judge slapped her with a seventy-five dollar fine. The story quickly shot around the entire country, and in the identity-politics fervor of the early '90s, people were plenty willing to strip down at the barricades. The next summer saw the beginning of a wave of "topless protests" in major cities: women in activist groups with names like "Naked Iconoclasts Fighting the Yoke" would show up at public parks and government buildings, rattle off a feminist statement condemning social double standards, quote a bit of Catherine MacKinnon and then peel.
Two cops floated by in a car; one of them pointed out the window and laughed. Nobody, it appeared, really gave a shit.
pissed that so many men were able to take their tops off. So on the way back home from class, she decided to take hers off too, sauntering through the suburban 'hood half-naturel. A local mother freaked out and called the cops, and the next day when Jacobs walked home again topless, an officer handed her a ticket for "indecency."
