Topfree picnic in Santa Cruz celebrates solstice and honors topfree legacy
Activists gather at Lighthouse Field today to promote body freedom and mark a historic date
This afternoon in Santa Cruz, a group of body freedom advocates is gathering on the lawn at Lighthouse Field for what organizers are calling the Topless Picnic—a joyful, top-optional community event designed to challenge the stigma surrounding bare chests in public.
The event, scheduled for today, June 21, is timed with the summer solstice and also falls on a meaningful date in body freedom history: the anniversary of the 1986 protest by the Rochester Topfree Seven, a group of women arrested in New York for going topless in a public park. Their eventual legal victory helped establish topless rights for women in New York State and inspired future movements for gender equality and body autonomy.
Organizer Lara Pierce, 26, promoted the picnic as a peaceful, lawful gathering to “normalize breasts in public” and to celebrate the body’s rightful place in nature. “Breasts have a place under the sun just as much as the ocean, the hills, and the birds,” she wrote on the event’s webpage.
Participants were invited to bring snacks, kites, games, musical instruments, and anything else that might support an afternoon of topless leisure and community connection. Local band Flat Sun Society is scheduled to perform around 1:30 p.m.
“I’ve always been one to lay outside and I have felt constrained by having to keep my chest covered,” Pierce told Lookout Santa Cruz. “It seems like there’s no good reason to be restricted that way.”
The picnic is open to people of all ages and genders, clothed or unclothed from the waist up. Pierce emphasized that the event is fully legal under California law and Santa Cruz municipal code, and framed it as a sit-in to call attention to the unequal enforcement of nudity laws based on gender presentation.
Pierce hopes to continue the series with monthly gatherings—creating an ongoing space where body freedom isn’t just defended, but celebrated. As she wrote in the event listing: “Your body is not a crime.” 🪐
Had I known a few hours earlier I would have attended this special event. Lora Boswell, former co-owner of Lupin Lodge Naturist Resort, has stated she attended the Wednesday Santa Cruz Farmers Market top-free, back in the 1970s and 1980s. Lora, who is now 93, asks when she comes to town if she can still go top-free. The answer is YES. I am glad the Rochester 7 were remembered in such a positive way.