Soon after the first picture appeared on Tuesday morning, word of the woman quickly spread around the internet, with sightings or her naked jaunt posted by excited bloggers.
She was first spotted on Bowery street by Matt Kosoy walking ‘briskly’ with a handbag over her shoulder.
Moments later Olivia Knoepfel posted a picture and tweeted: ‘did i just see a topless girl on bowery?
Carolina Ramirez later tweeted: ‘Saw her maybe around 230pm near central park on 5th and 69th St’.
But the bold woman didn’t get far before she was stopped by police and apparently issued with a fine.
But as several bloggers pointed out, it is legal for women to walk topless on the streets of New York.
In 1992, Ramona Santorelli and Mary Lou Schloss and five other women successfully challenged their arrest for violating a law that forbade them showing ‘that portion of the breast which is below the top of the areola.’
Arguing they were being discriminated against, New York Court of Appeals court ruled that the law was ‘discriminatory on its face since it defines ‘private or intimate parts’ of a woman’s but not a man’s body as including a specific part of the breast.’
Speaking to The Village Voice, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Paul Browne said: ‘The state’s highest court established long ago that women have the same right as men to appear topless in public.
‘Absent a link to some commercial enterprise or promotion, the woman’s lack of certain attire in this instance does not appear to be a police matter.’
