Bussom Buddies

The “Free the Nipple” movement continues to make headlines (and raise eyebrows) in Iceland. Launched in the U.S. in 2012, the high-profile pushback against prudery reached Icelandic shores two years ago when an 18-year-old activist Adda Þóreyjardóttir Smáradóttir took up the cause with support Björt Ólafsdótti, a member of the Icelandic parliament for the Bright Future political party.

The primary aim of the movement (both in Iceland and abroad) is to de-sexualize the female breast and make it acceptable in normal society for women to go topless in public.

Rallying around the hashtag #FreeTheNipple, more than a thousand Iceland females staged a rally in Reykjavik’s Austurvöllur Square in the summer of 2015 while Ólafsdótti earned fame by posting a photo of her own nipple online. “My nipple is now probably better known than my face, which you might think would be a problem for an reputable member of Iceland’s Parliament like myself,” she wrote in a local newspaper.

Smáradóttir was voted Iceland’s 2015 “Youth of the Year” for leading the bare-breast campaign.

Free the Nipple shot into the headlines again in January when University of Iceland student Diljá Sigurðardóttir was asked to leave a public pool in Akranes because she was swimming without a bikini top.

Iceland is also bracing for more breast free demonstrations and rallies this summer, when it finally gets sunny enough for everyone to start stripping their winter clothes off.