This Article is From Aug 22, 2015

The Topless Take a Pause From Photos in Times Square

The Topless Take a Pause From Photos in Times Square

The community of young women, who pose topless but for body paint with tourists and then ask for tips has recently come under fire from Mayor Bill de Blasio.

New York: On Friday afternoon, John and Kathie Watts of Hanover, Pennsylvania, were sitting at one of the tables on the pedestrian plaza on Broadway between 43rd and 44th Streets, drinking a soda and taking in what was the very ordinary tableau of Times Square on a summer day.

What was noteworthy was who wasn't sitting there: This was the spot where, most afternoons, a gaggle of men plant themselves in order to watch over a dozen or more women who, from 2 p.m. until midnight or later, parade around the plaza topless, except for body paint applied by those men, and take pictures with tourists in exchange for tips.

But Friday afternoon, just a day after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the formation of a high-level task force to restrict the women's activities and even suggested he might rip out the entire pedestrian plaza, the ranks of the women and their male partners had thinned considerably. None were around when the Wattses dropped by to celebrate their 40th anniversary (a good thing, too, since Kathie Watts said that the couple was Christian and "we think nudity is wrong.")

Two of the women arrived shortly after 6 p.m. (At least one other also showed up, but dressed in a bikini). But as for the rest, they seemed, at least for the moment, to have hung up their feathered headdresses and disappeared, without any handcuffs, lawyers or jackhammers being deployed.

Robert J. Burck, better known as the Naked Cowboy, who plays his guitar and poses for pictures in briefs and cowboy boots, noted that, on Thursday, only one of the women had shown up and quickly found all the attention focused on her.

"It was like Michael Jackson was here, because everybody couldn't wait to see a naked girl," he said.

He said he tried to be amicable with everyone who worked on the plaza but said that his wife and sister-in-law, who wear bikinis and play guitars as the Naked Cowgirls, made more money when the topless women, known as desnudas (Spanish for naked), weren't there.

His sister-in-law Elizabeth Cruz was blunt. "Men prefer the topless women," she said.

One of the desnudas, Melissa, 24, a native New Yorker who did not want to give her last name, said by phone Friday morning that she had been alarmed by the rash of negative publicity about the desnudas, which she felt depicted them as criminals, even though they were not breaking the law because female toplessness is generally legal. She said she was unsure if or when she would return to Times Square.

She said her relatives had told her, "'We don't want you to be in the papers being called a prostitute,'" but added that her family otherwise approved of what she was doing.

De Blasio, during a call-in appearance on NY1 on Friday, reiterated that the city was considering many options to curb the women's presence, including ripping up the pedestrian plazas. He said that the women were "a nuisance" and were "plying a business in a way that I certainly find inappropriate."

Reactions to the women's diminished numbers Friday were mixed.
Sam Kwon, 57, who works at a newsstand on the plaza, said that he had become friendly with the women and sometimes let them store their supplies in the stand or helped them make change for tourists.

He said that some of the women had told him that they were planning to stay away, at least for a while, because of all the cameramen and reporters approaching them.

"I like them - people like them," Kwon said.

Diana Baronian, 42, from Suffolk County on Long Island, was sitting on the plaza in the midafternoon with her husband, Paul. She said she agreed with the mayor that women walking around topless in Times Square was inappropriate. Still, she said, she had been curious to see what the fuss was about and was therefore slightly disappointed that they had been scared away.

"I guess they don't like the spotlight to be on them as much as you would think," she said.
© 2015, The New York Times News Service
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