Women fight for right to bare breasts

Two female students are demanding their rights after they were banned from bathing topless at a swimming pool in Uppsala. If girls are forced to wear bikinis, boys should be too, one of the women told The Local.

Ragnhild Karlsson, 22, and her friend Kristin Karlsson, 21, live on the same corridor in a student residence in the university town. On September 5th they took a trip to the Fyrishov leisure complex, where they decided to hop in for a swim without their bikini tops.

Though the pool was full of swimmers, a female lifeguard eventually caught sight of the bare-breasted women and reached for her whistle.

"We had been swimming for a while without anybody paying us any attention when the guards called us to the side and told us to either put on a top or leave. So we left," Ragnhild Karlsson told The Local.

On Wednesday, the two women sent a letter to the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman explaining that they saw no reason for men an women to be treated differently. If anything, a bikini top could be accused of drawing unnecessary attention to a woman's breasts. Read on >>