Times Square art offends but law allows ‘desnudas’
They stood in Times Square, crowned with blue and red ostrich feathers, daubed in the Stars and Stripes and naked but for briefs and high-heels.
At first there were only two, but more ‘‘desnudas’’ arrived until there were more than a dozen: topless women in body paint posing for photographs with tourists in exchange for a tip.
Families visiting from the Midwest are shocked, business leaders are furious – even the Naked Cowboy, who makes a living playing the guitar in his underpants, is ‘‘mildly scandalised’’.
Bill Bratton, the police commissioner of New York, said he and his officers had examined the problem of the painted ladies extremely closely and feared that nothing could be done.
‘‘It drives me crazy when at Times Square you see the naked people there covered in body paint as an expression of art,’’ he said, in an interview with City & State magazine. ‘‘We’ve researched that top to bottom and we cannot find any law that allows us to interfere with that freedom of expression reflected through art form.’’
In 1992 two women arrested for being topless in a New York park successfully argued a law allowing men but not women to bare their chests was discriminatory.
However, the city council
is now examining whether the explosion of naked women – one count numbered them at more than 40 – can be curtailed through legislation.
‘‘We need to get a handle on the disorder in Times Square,’’ Daniel Garodnick, a district councillor, said. ‘‘That includes the desnudas.’’ Councillors would also have to wrestle with ‘‘how to allow Times Square to keep its quirkiness while also condemning some elements,’’ he said.