The Associated Press ran a story earlier this month about efforts by civic and community leaders in the Moscow, Idaho, to shut down a topless car wash.
The controversy actually started several years ago with another group of women who decided to walk bare-chested through downtown Moscow. They were arrested, but in the ensuing legal fight Moscow’s ordinance that banned topless women but allowed topless men was ruled unconstitutionally vague.
Daisy Mace and her friends, including several men, are apparently the first to try to take commercial advantage of the lack of a specific statute. Their topless car wash operates irregularly and patrons are asked only for donations, but the car wash is lucrative enough to anger both civic leaders as well as competing car washes who complain that the topless attraction is stealing their business.
The Associated Press quoted local car wash owner Tony Heath complaining that he’s lost more than $100/day in business since the topless car wash folks set up shop, and that the whole enterprise is unfair because, “Guys can’t go around topless and make money.”
The car washers have been evicted from their apartment at least twice for holding car washes there, but so far efforts to craft an ordinance that would let the city squash the topless car washers have bogged down into debates over just how much of the breast — whether male or female — should be covered up. The current proposal would require both men and women to have at least a thin strip of cloth to cover up the nipples.
Source:
Topless car wash raises money and tempers in Idaho. Nicholas K. Geranios, Associated Press, July 11, 2002.