Perusing the Chicago Municipal Code, one will find, along with one of the nation’s toughest building codes (intentionally designed to make compliance impossible) and other curiosities (such as the archaic forbiddance of a Museum of Anatomy), various regulations regarding the exposure of women’s breasts. Although nipples are clearly the main concern, the word nipple never appears. Within descriptions of Obscenity, Adult Entertainment, and Indecent Exposure are references to the female breast “below a point immediately above the top of the aureola,” “at or below the upper edge of the aureola,” and “at or below the aureola thereof.” It’s never “Don’t swim in the river,” but “Okay, so here’s where the shore starts...”
Especially in these sections, the language is almost charming in its struggle for precision. It is unlawful, for instance, if a man has a noticeable boner in public. Unlike nipples, the hard-on needn’t be naked. A rise in the Levis suffices. The code specifically speaks against “covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state,” even if they are “completely and opaquely covered.” Turgid is always the word. To nitpick, the entire genitalia doesn’t swell when a man is aroused, merely the primary dangling appendage. If my testicles started swelling, I’m not sure what I’d do. But I hear that’s how some guys like it. My gay friends tell me about a craze known as “plumping” where men enlarge their scrotum using saline solution. One says he knows a hardcore plumper with nuts the size of grapefruits. My reading of the code would suggest that, even though plumped balls are consistently swollen and thus don’t indicate arousal, they’re still indecent if easily noticed. And who wouldn’t notice a guy with two grapefruits in his pants? Perhaps someone should warn the city about the dangers of getting into any kind of size issue with queens. My gay friends like male genitals to be discernible at all times, not just during turgidity. Hence the first thing they do with new jeans is sandpaper the crotch to make it appear as if their bulging cock stresses the fabric. They’re a particularly randy bunch and would like nothing better than to drop trou for an officer who suspected their indecency just to show him they’re simply blessed. In any case, what’s really hard is trying not to wonder about the discussions from which these descriptions arose, and also the reasoning behind them. Like why treat nipple like an N-word?
I find it somewhat poetic that, while the nude women on stage at a strip club are considered Adult Entertainment, it’s the fully-clothed men attending the show who are at risk of Indecent Exposure. Obviously, Chicago cops don’t raid titty bars, line the men against the wall, and bust the ones with boners. The definitions for Obscenity and Adult Entertainment are instead designed like the infamous building restrictions, as narrow and confining guidelines rarely put into practice in full but there on the books for their potential leverage in disputes or as a tool for those in power. For instance, a liquor license could be at stake. A business cannot be granted a liquor license if “any live act, demonstration, dance, or exhibition” exposes to public view 1) “genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, perineum and anal region or pubic hair region,” 2) any device, costume, or covering which gives the appearance of or simulates the same*, or 3) the female breast. In the mind of Chicago’s municipal imagination, it’s best for everyone if nudity and drunkenness don’t mix.
Hence in Windy City strip clubs you can either have “near beer” and full nudity or real beer and pasties. Choose your simulation. As for bars with live entertainment, let’s say a female act suffered a wardrobe malfunction -- would you have to stop serving? I once saw the band Nashville Pussy perform at Lounge Ax and Ruyter Suys (at left) had her nipples slip from her bikini top I don't know how many times while she wailed on guitar. If bared breasts are in fact reason enough to revoke a bar’s license, could she conceivably strip her way through the local circuit until every club in the city went dry? Imagine the new temperance movement with its Carrie Nation flashing her hooters instead of swinging a hatchet. “Men, I have come to save you from drunkards’ fates. Behold the instruments of our Lord...” 
You almost have to give the code makers artistic credit for including the perineum within civic infractions. Try for an experiment to expose your taint without flashing any balls, bush, or butt. Were they worried some clever mooner might defend themselves with a perineum loophole? (“Look judge, all she saw was the runway ...”) Did they want to add further counts against such offenders? (“Let the record show that the witness is pointing to the defendant’s anus, genitals, pubic hair region and perineum...”) If they wanted to provide an obsessively detailed inventory of all the naughty body parts for posterity, then why not mention nipples? The Indecent Exposure definition even redundantly adds the vulva to the list, perhaps the result of a tax-funded discussion on shaving. The breast restrictions for Indecent Exposure are also phrased differently, referring to “any portion of the female breast below the upper edge of the aureola thereof of any female person.” One could conclude that if a non-female person were somehow in possession of a female breast, they could freely expose it on Chicago streets. Good news for hermaphrodites. Imagine packed among the hard bodies, bathing beauties, and wannabe bunnies on North Beach, roving gangs of topless chicks-with-dicks gleefully kicking sand on all the bikni-clad silly cones, mocking strap lines and flaunting their tans. Perfectly legal, you could argue, until one got a hard-on. •
Topless band photo = The Ladybirds. You can buy a photo reprint of them playing the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas in 1967 from Vegas Retro. If they were around today, could they play in your town? Check your main public library branch for a copy of your municipal code. Here's another topless band picture. Is it them? Different guitars. Different hair. But the breasts... Am I wrong?
* Re: "any device, costume, or covering." Although things that look like a penis, a pussy, or an ass are out, luckily for drag queens, you can still perform in things that look like tits. This scarf and these slippers would make a great matching set. (The hat just reminds you how many hats -- and the people in them -- already look like a boob.)
Further reading:
"The Book of the Breast" by Robert Anton Wilson (Playboy Press). As Homer Simpson said of the movie "Naked Lunch": "I can think of two things wrong with that title." No, Wilson's book will not treat you to centerfolds, but rather school you in the treatment of the female breast in a host of civilizations throughout history. Using his own unique blend of Freudian anthropology, Wilson outlines how societies that tend to repress the female breast also tend to demonstrate “patrist or anal” values, such as a restrictive attitude toward sex, inferior treatment toward women, a deep fear of homosexuality, an ascetic fear of pleasure, an authoritarian political structure, and a father- or god-based religion. And conversely, societies that tend not to repress the female breast are shown to demonstrate “matrist or oral” values, such as a permissive attitude toward sex, equal rights for women, a deep fear of incest, a hedonistic acceptance of pleasure, a democratic political structure, a progressive encouragement of revolution and research, and a mother- or goddess-based religion. I've tried to apply his thesis to our own society but can’t quite identify a dominant trend, unless one counts a tendency towards hypocrisy and paradox. It’s taxing enough just trying to place where things fall in the spectrum. Take "Girls Gone Wild." Hedonistic celebration? Inferior treatment? Reaction to repression or ironic support of it? Call me treasonous, but what would the French say? I’m not sure but, ever since reading this book, I've found myself even more attentive to tits than I was already. Order a copy direct from the author.
"Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film" by Jimmy McDonough. Soon to be a major motion picture. Until it is, the best and often only way to get a hold of Russ Meyer's films is through his own company, RM Films International, where one is additionally treated to Russ's self-written ad copy:
"FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL! KILL! is the story of a new breed of SUPERWOMEN emerging out of the ruthlessness of our times. We are introduced to three BUXOM Go-Go girls: VARLA, ROSIE, and BILLIE, wildly dancing the Watusi before the leers, jeers and lecherous come-ons of their drooling all-male audience. The violence, implicit in the girls' tease, is quickly moved out of the microcosmic bar into the outside world as they literally let go of themselves, embarking on a wild, violent, deadly journey of vengeance on all men. VARLA, the outrageously abundant KARATE MASTER leader of the pack, breaks the arms and back of one man, runs her Porsche over two others, grinds a fourth, a muscleman, against a wall and, eventually, deliberately goes down the path of her own self-destruction, dragging her two BUXOTIC cohorts along with her. Filmed in glorious black & blue."
Read excerpts from The Big Book of Breasts by Dian Hanson here.
While you're reading, you can listen to a full-frontal double-bill of hard rocking fems featuring Nashville Pussy and Tits of Death.
Or listen now to Quomma fave Boobs A Lot (MP3) by The Fugs.
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