That's What We Call a Double Standard, Sweetie

"Mommy, why isn't that boy wearing his shirt?  You said we always have to wear clothes outside!"

That "boy" was a half-naked trash collector, riding down the street on the back of a garbage truck in work boots and shorty shorts for God and everyone to see.  I'm surprised Natalie noticed and questioned his questionable state of undress after last weekend at the shore surrounded by shirtless men but maybe it took this long for her thought process to catch up.

What to say, what to say...I, too, have always wondered why men can go topless but women cannot.  I'm old enough now to understand that it's an arbitrary rule instituted by our misogynistic, puritanical forefathers but good Lord, I can't tell her that.  She wouldn't understand what it means and further explanation would only jade her beyond her tender years.  (I'll leave the jading to male-student-preferring teachers, leering construction workers, glass-ceiling-perpetuating employers and jerks she dates.)

Seriously, though, why are male nipples acceptable displays of skin and women's must be hidden from sight at all times?  Men's nipples, like the British Monarchy, are largely decorative, serving no true purpose.  Women can sustain human life with their breasts but men cannot (regardless of what Ben Stiller's character asserts about milking any nippled creatures in "Meet the Parents") and yet men can parade their hairy little chest raisins all about town while women have been castigated and legally reprimanded for using their mammaries to feed their children discreetly in public.  Totally fucked up but I can't say THAT to a three year old.

I told her that men are allowed to take their shirts off outside and women are not because that is the silly rule we have to follow.  She shrugged and accepted it.  No doubt we'll revisit the topic again but for now, she's taking it at face value and I'm off the hook.