In the Swedish city of Sundsvall, women are now allowed to bare their breasts at the public pool thanks to a feminist group called Bara Bröst (“Bare Breasts” or “Just Breasts” – it’s a play on words).

To North Americans, this might sound extreme, but for a native Norwegian like myself, this comes as no surprise. In high school, most of my female classmates went topless on our trips to the beach. It’s just the way things work “over there”; part of the culture. And after all, it’s not illegal (at least not in Scandinavia). That’s the argument the feminist group is using: There is no law that says you can’t go topless on the beach, so why shouldn’t you be able to do the same at the public pool? And why is it that men are allowed to swim with no shirt on but women have to cover up?

The group is using this cause as a stepping stone in their battle to ‘de-sexualize’ the female body in non-sexual situations and further the equality of the sexes, because no matter how much you dress it up, women are treated differently than men when it comes to swimming attire…so they say.

The lifting of the topless-ban in pools in Sundsvall came as a response to an Ombudsman ruling in the Swedish town of Upsalla, which stated that refusing access to two young women who wanted to enter the pool topless was warranted, citing “decency,” “prevailing norms,” and the fact it could make the male swimmers “uncomfortable” (clearly the Ombudsman was female).

Read the story in Norwegian at Aftenposten or in Swedish at Dagbladet.