New information on chests

Back in 2014, I had a post about the history of men's swimwear, noting that it would seem that sometime in the 1930's it became acceptable, at least in Australia, for men on a public beach to go bare-chested in their swimwear.    Then in a post earlier this year, I noted that the British police were arresting men for sunbathing shirtless in parks in the 1920's.   Men's chests seemed to be a sensitive issue, but I hadn't found anything about how the turnaround to acceptability had happened. 

Well, on the weekend, I stumbled across a Washington Post article which fills in a lot of the story, at least in the USA:

...1930s America lived in fear of the male nipple. It was illegal in most states and cities for men to go anywhere shirtless, even at the beach.

It's a fun read, looking at what was a hot social issue a mere 90 years ago.  More extracts:

A headline on a June 16, 1934, Associated Press story called it the “Perennial Battle of togs” before listing which cities and states would jail men for indecency if they showed their chests.

“New York City, for example, is that way about half-naked natators at municipal beaches. It arrests them on sight. Fines of $1 are the penalty. The city fathers insist on complete bathing suits — tops and trunks, or one-piece suits combining both.”...

Many places where folks understood the outcome of a water-meets-light-colored fabric equation specifically banned all-white suits.

In D.C., men were urged to swim in the one-piece suits their hotels provided.

And the Northeastern fashion of flirting with lawlessness by wearing a tank but letting the straps slip to reveal some pecs was strictly and specifically prohibited.

“All we demand is decency,” William E. Whittacker, secretary to the Boston Metropolitan District Commission told the Associated Press. “But we won’t allow slipping straps.”

Geez, so many rules.

 The article notes that men might have been motivated to go topless by the reaction to Tarzan!:

Men grew tired of being told what they could do with their bodies and kept rebelling, especially after observing the way dames swooned after seeing Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller bare-chested in the 1932 “Tarzan the Ape Man” flick....

Not all women were thrilled with the views their non-Olympian peers provided. A group of pearl-clutching New Yorkers said they had “no desire to gaze upon hairy chested men,” according to a June 29, 1936, Associated Press story.

“In this year of campaigns we are having our own drive, and we won’t stop until every hairy chested man covers up on the beach or removes the curls from his chest,” said Grace Donohue, a spokeswoman for the group who demanded men wear shirts or wax.

So it was the hair that was the problem, not the nipples?

Anyway, it all came to a head by 1937:

One hot August day in 1935, police rounded up, arrested and fined 42 men who protested and swam topless on the beach in Atlantic City, according to the New York Times. City official Thomas D. Taggart Jr. logged each of their arrests and collected a $2 fine from each bare-chested man.

The summer of 1936 was the summer of the men’s no-shirt movement, and arrests and protests and slipped straps were an epidemic.

But next year, in the epicenter of the men’s protests and mass arrests, a lengthy experience with “bareback bathing,” as some called it, changed one important man’s mind.

“ ‘Bareback’ bathing for men, heretofore taboo in Atlantic City, broke down the last line of official resistence today and will be allowed this Summer,” the New York Times reported on March 29, 1937. “Mayor C.D. White succeeded in holding off the invasion of shirtless bathing suits all last Summer on the ground they were ‘not nice.’ But today he returned from a vacation in Florida a convert to the style.”

 A judge in New York overturned the ban the same year. And boom, male nipples were free.

Now you know.