I’ve picked up a report from French TV channel TV5 of another Femen ‘happening’ or protest in Paris yesterday.

Femen, in case you didn’t know, are a Ukrainian group who stage topless protest to highlight various feminist and political issues.

As one of their taglines suggests, ‘smart people are inspired, dictators are horrified’.

Normally, I’m appalled at the continuing sexualisation of breasts. I would have imagined in the 21st century we should have been over such things, and the continuance as a method os selling daily papers here in the UK (and in Germany, as far as I remember, too, and possibly other places) is disgraceful, with the models reduced to being nothing more than a pair of breasts.

But I suppose the other way of looking at it might be that who, exactly, is empowered by this? Maybe the models, using their own peculiar talents, are controlling a male dominated media. Maybe they’re sending a powerful message that ‘with these, I control your world’. Or maybe they’re just idiotic, dumb blondes (and brunettes) seeking a way in which to scale the giddy heights of ‘Z’ list celebrity and hang around with football stars. Who knows?

What gives Femen the opportunity to make such a powerful message is, of course, exactly because breasts are still seen in a sexual manner. Their exposure, whether in the centre of Paris, or from a breastfeeding mother on a bus in your town, still has the power to shock, in a way, despite our over familiarity with them in the media.

Concerns over political issues (Russian energy company Gazprom, the patriarchal system of Islam) are some of Femen’s targets, as well as objections to being ‘objectified’.

In solidarity with their aims, partly to diminish to sexualisation of breasts, or the exposure of the naked female form in a patriarchal society, we grabbed a model, tp’ed over to the Eiffel tower, and shot off a few pictures.

We’d have liked to have got a ‘flash mob’ of semi naked protestors if we could, and maybe even had them wave placards. Unfortunately the shoot was done in a hurry, so you’ll have to make do with Pippa posing here. Not remotely ‘naturist’ in its intent or delivery, it is however an opportunity to highlight body issues in RL, and how the attitudes are sometimes reflected (‘wow! you have lovely tits’) within SL.