The American antagonism with female nudity

Hours after Elfie Krokos was playing Frisbee in her fiancé's front yard, a police officer had showed up telling her she was facing charges. 

Her crime? She was topless at the time. 

Elfie's case is one of several that brings the issue of female nudity at the forefront of the American experience. 

A recent BBC report on this issue highlighted how women are increasingly challenging the country's "laws about nudity and sparking a debate about the country's attitude to the naked female form." 

Elfie Krokos had thought the law in her state had changed, according to the BBC. 

"I kept asking the police officer what I was being charged with, but I was just told I was disgusting the neighbours and that there were children around," she told the media. 

Elfie thought the law had changed. 

Activists of Free the Nipple, an international movement campaigning for gender equality in nudity, had sued the city of Fort Collins, Colorado, where Elfie lived, demanding the right of females to be topless like men. 

Indeed, The Free the Nipple versus City of Fort Collins case said, "Ordinances based on gender are unconstitutional." 

It was legal, the court said, for women to be topless where it was legal for men. 

Yet the police officer who had arrested Elfie maintained they did not "receive training on this," according to a media report.

This has led to Elfie Krokos being awarded $50,000 in a civil settlement on the case, further exasperating the debate regarding the controversial issue. 

Professor Amy Werbel, author of "Lust on Trial," a book which talks about the history of American obscenity, said America's opposition to female nudity was rooted in "evangelical Christian opposition to the display of the body" going back to the arrival of the Puritans in New England. 

Kathryn Watzel, president of the American Association of Nude Recreation, said, "More people are now fighting in courts for their legal right to nudity than before."

She added, "Things change, attitudes change. Remember just 20 years ago breastfeeding in public was a no-no in many people's eyes."

With more women willing to fight for equality on the subject of nudity and the human body, the American political and social sphere is bound to witness many more social incidents occurring like that of Elfie Krokos. 

Elfie Krokos, however, remains stunned with what had happened to her. "This is not about feminism," she said, "this is about equality."