Nantucket residents say they are worried about the prospect of topless bathers this summer

Nantucket residents are raising concerns just months before the island will allow women to go topless on Massachusetts’ resort island beaches for the first time.

The amendment to the Beach Gender Equality Bylaw passed 327-242 last May.

The regulations “give space to all bodies, allowing anyone, regardless of gender, to be topless”, starting this summer.

Previously, only men could go topless in public.

The state’s attorney general endorsed the measure, saying, “We approve of the city’s vote allowing anyone to go topless on any public or private beach in Nantucket because we discern no conflict” with the Constitution.

Local, Dorothy Stover, 41, has proposed a law change to allow anyone who chooses, regardless of gender, to go topless

But the locals, who say they are not prudes, are not looking forward to the start of the summer season.

“I don’t want the season to start. It’s like having a free strip club. So many people didn’t vote for it,” Nantucket resident Beth Barry told Mercury News.

Barry is so concerned about the island’s first topless summer that she wants to vote to be recast.

“It is radically changing our community. How can it be every beach? I couldn’t vote from Boston,” she complained.

The city has even admitted that there will be a sort of adjustment period.

“We ask everyone to be patient and respectful as the island adjusts to this one-of-a-kind settlement in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

Amendment to beach gender equality bylaw passed last May following debate at annual town hall meeting

Stover presented his proposal last year, pointing out that many communities already allow anyone who chooses to be topless on public beaches.

Stover has described herself as an intuitive love teacher and teaches classes online

The island’s ‘Rules and Regulations’ site has all sorts of regulations in place for fire pits, beach bonfires, noise, smoking and drinking – but topless sunbathing isn’t mentioned. .

The settlement was proposed by 41-year-old seventh-generation Nantucket resident Dorothy Stover, and reads in part: “In order to promote equality for all people, everyone will be permitted to be topless on n’ any public or private beach” in town.

Stover said she feels the state law that only allows men to take their tops off in public “is really outdated.”

“Last summer I was at the beach and wanted to lay down topless,” she recalled to the Cape Cod Times. ‘And I thought, ‘why can’t I do this?’ Some men have bigger boobs than me!

Stover claims she was inspired after reading a cartoon.

“I saw this comic which had a man and a woman who had the exact same body and they were both topless. The man said to the woman, ‘Look at you, you’re so indecent, how do you dare?” And she said, “Look at me? Look at you!” They had the same body, but only one is allowed to be topless.

Stover said she felt it was unfair that she couldn’t take her top off, when men could

Stover told WBUR that she knows some people who are against the measure, but the overwhelming reaction has been positive.

Her hope is to normalize bodies of all shapes and sizes and foster an environment of acceptance, she said.

“I’m not saying everyone has to be topless,” Stover said. “I want to support body love.”

Stover pointed out that many communities already allow anyone who chooses to be topless on public beaches, the Boston Globe reported.

“Nantucket has a history of fighting for equality,” she added.

Close-up of a pair of young women in bikinis as they sunbathe on deckchairs above the sand at the Cliffside Beach Club, Nantucket, Massachusetts, August 1957