Sep 22, 2026 · 33 min · 12 segments
Nineteen-year-old Gwen Jacob is just trying to catch a breeze when she goes topless during a 1991 heat wave. But after being cat-called and arrested, her simple attempt to stay cool turns into a…
Clare Bonnyman
Falen JohnsonHost
[upbeat music] It's July 1991, and southern Ontario is in a heat wave, the worst it's had in years.
I think it was about 33 degrees out, if I remember, and it was the hottest day of the summer to that point.
I was inside the university center, which was freezing cold with the air conditioning, and I had just stepped out in the middle of the afternoon into this wall of heat and humidity.
Gwen's a philosophy and women's studies student, so it's not really a surprise that as she and her friend Susie walk across campus, she notices something.
Get your boobs out! Let's get a boob parade!
The male students were all, like, playing hacky sack or touch football or, you know, running around with their shirts off, and the women were just sort of standing off to the side, watching this happen, because we were all sweating to death.
She tells Susie how unfair it all seems to her, and when another friend approaches, Susie jokes, "Gwen wants to take her shirt off." [upbeat music] And that prompt is all she needs.
So I just took my shirt off.
[upbeat music] I just shoved it down to the back of my shorts, and I felt the breeze on my skin, and it was just absolutely euphoric.
And while she gets some funny looks, she's mostly unbothered as she walks with her friends.
Little does she know that by stripping down, she started a fight that will eventually land her in court and spark a nationwide debate over who's in charge of women's bodies.
Lawmakers across the province, and indeed across the country, began to twitch in fear that women everywhere would simply take it off, because technically, they could.
[upbeat music] The right to bare our breasts is necessary, so long as men have that right.
Oh.
[jeering]
People wanting to have their filthy rights and impose them on us.
It's kind of gross.
The breast is a sex organ, and simple morality would say that it should be covered in public.
[upbeat music]
It's the story of a 19-year-old who thought she should be free to bare her chest in public, and whose fight changed the way the law treats women's bodies.
[upbeat music] It's July 1991, and southern Ontario is in a heat wave, the worst it's had in years.
I think it was about 33 degrees out, if I remember, and it was the hottest day of the summer to that point.
I was inside the university center, which was freezing cold with the air conditioning, and I had just stepped out in the middle of the afternoon into this wall of heat and humidity.
Gwen's a philosophy and women's studies student, so it's not really a surprise that as she and her friend Susie walk across campus, she notices something.
Get your boobs out! Let's get a boob parade!
The male students were all, like, playing hacky sack or touch football or, you know, running around with their shirts off, and the women were just sort of standing off to the side, watching this happen, because we were all sweating to death.
She tells Susie how unfair it all seems to her, and when another friend approaches, Susie jokes, "Gwen wants to take her shirt off." [upbeat music] And that prompt is all she needs.
So I just took my shirt off.
[upbeat music] I just shoved it down to the back of my shorts, and I felt the breeze on my skin, and it was just absolutely euphoric.
And while she gets some funny looks, she's mostly unbothered as she walks with her friends.
Little does she know that by stripping down, she started a fight that will eventually land her in court and spark a nationwide debate over who's in charge of women's bodies.
Lawmakers across the province, and indeed across the country, began to twitch in fear that women everywhere would simply take it off, because technically, they could.
[upbeat music] The right to bare our breasts is necessary, so long as men have that right.
Oh.
[jeering]
People wanting to have their filthy rights and impose them on us.
It's kind of gross.
The breast is a sex organ, and simple morality would say that it should be covered in public.
[upbeat music]
It's the story of a 19-year-old who thought she should be free to bare her chest in public, and whose fight changed the way the law treats women's bodies.
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