The Rise Of The Nipples

Silicone, cotton, plastic, stickers, pasties, discs, adhesive, nets. You might think I’m standing at a hardware or general supplies store reading off a list of items I’m buying for a home renovation project, but let me correct you.

These are all the materials and methods employed for the greatest and oldest cover-up of all times. It’s about how we make the innocuous mammary twins disappear from the public eye. I present to you. The Great…Nipple-dini.

Alright, Houdini might balk at this rechristening but I bet he would have found this ask of his magic a tad bit futile. Why is it that the whole world, women included; seem to want to deny the existence of these most efficient, practical and sensory peaks that we have been naturally blessed with.

The rise of the nipples

I’ll admit I am as conditioned as the next person when it comes to this subterfuge. Avoiding extremely cold passages and rooms, avoiding thin white shirts, sighing at an ill-fitting bra that will allow a protrusion, crossing the arms or holding out a t-shirt so a relative or driver doesn’t notice any standing ovations, I’ve done it all. But at some point, the double standards adopted on the male vs female nippers just stopped making sense.

Did you know that according to some studies, the male nipple has a bigger supply of nerves, resulting in more arousal when, well.. handled? That pretty much puts paid to the argument that because nipples are an erogenous zone for women, they must remain covered up, given our fascination for locking away anything sexual from human sight as it is considered ungenteel and can pollute minds.

Think about it, not only do nipples serve a sexual purpose for women, they are functional too, given that women breastfeed. Then why should our nipples be restrained when they are doing more than everyone else.

This begs the question, why do men have nipples in the first place? Are they meant to be sitting around like useless warts? The answer lies in the fact that nipples develop in the womb; well before it has been determined whether the embryo is male or female. Could that mean everyone starts out life in the uterus as a female? Mind-blowing possibility, isn’t it? To think we are at the very starting point of creation and are then disenfranchised and elbowed out of the way like the fairer pests.

Now I’m not saying that we all agitate for a nudist beach where our nipples can roam free, but it is ridiculous to cover up all and sundry nipples everywhere, even when there is an educational purpose attached to it.

The other day, I went online with my daughter, searching for some indigenous tribes. This was part of a school project. And what do you know. There they were. The lovely ladies in their attire less glory, with the exception of their nipples that had been plastered with some effect to make them invisible. It was a rough and hasty job, marring the beauty, the fierceness and the determination on the faces of these hardy women; but as long as the unseemingly black dots had been sent to the gallows, no one cared. They should have borrowed Harry’s invisibility cloak and had more aesthetic luck.

My daughter asked me if what she saw was a special kind of bra that the naked women were experimenting with. I wasn’t about to tell her in her foundational years that nipples are to be hidden or something to be ashamed of so I blamed it on a glitchy website.

There’s another point of view on nipples, (as if we needed more) that women wield them as a weapon. Yes. As idiotic as that sounds. I was watching a show yesterday where a student threatened to report her supervising professor for making sexual advances. He sneered in her face calling her a bitch and a tease. Why? Because apparently she would wear sheer tops or loose bras where her nipples would rise to the occasion for all to see. So, she deserved what came her way.

This inane logic is as sound as the one which states that women who wear short skirts and tight clothing are asking for it from all random men. Next time I hear a newscaster talk about WMDs, I’m not going to think of tanks and guns but the friendly neighbourhood battalion of nipples. Can you blame me? They apparently wield all the sexual power in the world, the one that can’t be corrupted by manipulating technology.

I recently discovered that there are many more nipple types than the ones I knew of. Nipples and no nipples. So, let me enlighten you. There are hairy ones, inverted, bumpy, protruding, flat, multiple nipples (there’s an AK 47 for you) and many more. Such a variety of options and not one makes the cut. They are all destined to live in the darkness. But women are now fighting back, having had enough of this BS.

I’ve heard of a Free the nipple movement in the US and in other countries; that encourages women to attend specially organised Yoga classes; bare-chested and free. There are nipple tattoo parlours and nipple art hailing the dusky little beauties. People are going a step further in celebrating them, heightening their pleasure by using nipple clamps and other fun toys. Women on social media, influencers, and mothers have all gone online and shared videos of them breastfeeding their little hungry babies, wilfully rejecting any diktats on obscenity and decency.

All around the world, nipples are breaking out of homes and coming up for air. And why not, it's about time. Left up to me, I would take all this path-breaking content and put it on a channel to create awareness and let the world know that we have had enough, nipples have had enough, and that they refuse to go back into the bra without a fight. You’re trying to guess the channel name; aren’t you? Of course, it's Nipple-odeon!

Richa S Mukherjee is an award-winning writer with four books under her belt, two of which are getting adapted for screen. Views expressed are the author’s own.

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