Topless rally: An issue close to his heart

Anyone reading the news report of the “topless rally” held in downtown Asheville last week surely had questions: Turnout for an event with such high gawker appeal was actually down from a similar rally last year? Why is a 59-year old man organizing a movement that encourages women to bare their breasts in public? Does he understand how, uh, pervy that seems? And does he really go by the name Sparkles the Clown?

The answers, in order: First, rally organizer, Jeff Johnson of Huntsville, Ala., says that the Asheville Citizen-Times’ headcount was wrong. The paper reported that only a few hundred people attended the Aug. 26 event, down from some two thousand the previous year, but Johnson says a reporter took only one headcount near the beginning of the rally. By the end of the rally, Johnson says, something like 3,000 people had appeared or at least passed through. Of the attendees, “several dozen” women actually bared their breasts.

Second, Johnson says prohibitions on bare breasts are an equality issue, and worth his (or anyone else’s) attention. “My wife and I, if we walk downtown and we both take our shirts off, she gets arrested, and I get to continue on. It’s unconstitutional to regulate a woman’s breasts and not a man’s, and if you do that, you’re making laws based on gender alone,” he says.

Third, the bare-breast movement is no more prurient that the controversy that accompanied the advent of mini-skirts, Johnson says: “Now we don’t think anything about women wearing short skirts. It’s not a big deal.”

Finally, Johnson indeed has performed as a children’s entertainer named Sparkles the Clown, but recently retired. But he still manages his wife’s pediatrics practice in Huntsville.

“Living in Alabama, there are not many people who agree with me,” he said.

David Donovan