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Woman on Lake
After weeks of protesting, volunteering, and donating after the murder of George Floyd, Elsie Olin and Kristian Calbert wanted to take a moment to relax. The two went to Golden Valley’s Twin Lake beach, also known to locals as Bare-Ass beach. Like other beach-goers, Olin and Calbert spent part of their time sunbathing topless, but later put their tops back on.
Soon after, cops from both Golden Valley and Minneapolis Parks arrived. They went straight to Olin and Calbert, requested their IDs, and told them to expect to receive citations for public nudity. Clothed and confused, they asked why.
“We were informed that we’d been surveilled with drone footage that day, which makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable,” Olin says. “This is like a safe place for us to relax, and now there’s police presence and drone footage and it’s just not a safe place anymore, which is very frustrating.”
Further away on the beach, Paula Chesley received a citation as well. Out of sight from the other patrons, she read a book next to a friend. She had the top of her swimsuit pulled down, and was laying on her stomach, making it difficult to see that she was topless when she was approached by the cops.
“It was a little intimidating,” Chesley says. “Of all of them, there was only one female officer and so it’s like getting surrounded by four or five men on this tiny beach where I’m basically alone.”
On the main beach, people repeated, “They’re not topless!” as the cops collected information from Calbert and Olin. Calbert posted a video of the encounter on Instagram which garnered lots of support, and ignited even more anger at the police departments, especially after multiple beach-goers accused the police of targeting Black people.
Golden Valley Mayor Shepard Harris denied in a Facebook post that there was targeting, and linked a statement from the city explaining what happened that day. He also said that none of the women who were questioned by police would receive citations. However, days later, all of the women received tickets in the mail. The citations were revoked the next day, but none of the women were officially informed by the city.
And, despite the near immediate revocation, the citation will still show up on background checks until their record is expunged, a process that can take up to 6 months. Until then, this could cause the women issues if they want to apply for new housing or employment.
If the women were in the city of Minneapolis, outside anywhere but a park, they would not have been cited, because in Minneapolis it’s legal to be topless anywhere except at parks. But, that could change August 19.
Park Ordinance Vote
The timing of the July 10 incident proved to be serendipitous. The Minneapolis Parks Board already had the public nudity ordinance on the docket to vote on this summer. After debating the ordinance July 15, the Parks Board voted to hold a public hearing on August 19 where they’ll have a final vote.
The current Minneapolis Parks ordinance reads: “No person ten years of age or older shall intentionally expose his or her own genitals, pubic area, buttocks or female breast below the top of the areola, with less than a fully opaque covering in or upon any park or parkway.”
The vote would change the portion regarding the female breast, and decriminalize women being topless in Minneapolis parks, making it legal for women to be topless outside anywhere in Minneapolis.
The state statute is much more ambiguous when it comes to public indecency, with part of it declaring indecent exposure as: “Engaging in any other lewd or lascivious (sexual) behavior or public indecency.”
“The problem is, within the Minnesota statute, ‘lewd and lascivious’ is not really defined,” says Jill Brisbois, a criminal law attorney representing the women cited pro-bono. “Nude is not lewd, so simply being nude is not illegal. What I usually say ‘lewd’ is, is drawing unwanted attention to yourself… Simply sunbathing at a beach, the person’s intent isn’t to draw unwanted attention, they’re just simply minding their own business.”
Olin, Calbert, Chesley, Brisbois, and Helena Howard attended the July 10 hearing where Chesley and Howard both spoke.
Howard was cited in 2018 for being topless on a beach with her partner. After Jill Bisbois became her lawyer, the citation was quickly dropped. Since then, she’s been a heavy proponent of changing the ordinance, raising awareness through founding the group Topless Minneapolis, and helping organize topless (and legal) bike rides throughout the city.
Although the July 15 vote was in their favor, not everyone at the meeting was happy with the women’s attendance. After Chesley finished speaking, a man from the audience yelled, “Put your shirt on!”
“He just yelled out in the middle of everything,” Chesley says. “Actually what was more frustrating for me, the parks officers, the commissioners who were they didn’t say anything, didn’t reprimand him, didn't ask him to leave, so no repercussions whatsoever.”
And, according to Olin, as the women were leaving, another woman went up to Howard and demanded, “Why can’t you just be normal?”
But, despite the insults they’ve received, the women have all received an outpour of support in the form of comments, direct messages, and emails. Howard has received almost daily messages of support since City Pages reported on her topless bike rides earlier this summer. Some of the women even received offers from strangers to pay for their tickets.
What Would Be Different?
Because it’s already legal elsewhere in the city, some of the women of Topless Minneapolis don’t think the city would change that much in the day-to-day, but it would eliminate something that does more harm than good.
“The ordinance is sexist in that it’s treating men and women differently under the law,” Howard says. “It is sexualizing female bodies, saying it’s sexual for a woman to be topless, but not for a man to be topless.”
“I genuinely think we’ll be happier people in parks—mothers breastfeeding their children without fear, just women being women and being safe without fear,” Olin says. “It would be really nice not to be afraid because I have female breasts.”
Despite the trouble and harassment they went through from the events at Twin Lake beach, Olin and Chesley say that they would go topless again. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, it’s not like I’m being lewd or lascivious anyway, and it’s a silly ordinance,” Chesley says.
If the ordinance changes after August 19, Chesley has high hopes for the city. She says: “Maybe it’ll look a little bit more like Europe where people feel more free and more accepting of their own bodies.”
