The Free the Nipple movement became a mini-phenomenon last year. The singer Miley Cyrus embraced it, baring her breasts (with pasties) on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" to make a point about patriarchy. Comedian Chelsea Handler heralded the fight against sexual objectification while mocking Vladimir Putin's topless horseback-riding. Actress and writer Lena Dunham added some intellectual heft to the movement.

Now Free the Nipple founder Lina Esco is ready for the next phase.

"Free the Nipple is just a Trojan horse in order to start the conversation of gender equality," the 31-year-old filmmaker and activist said in a recent Comedy Central video. "It's not really about going topless. It's about having the choice." (Watch the video below, but please note: there's some blurred-out toplessness.)

To be sure, the battle has only just begun. Understanding of what the movement is about remains, for many people, skin deep. After all, combining titillation and feminist activism inevitably is going to cause some confusion. Model and "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" star Kendall Jenner, for example, recently declared, "I'm all about freeing the nipple," but for her it seems to be merely a look-at-me style choice.

"I'm either braless or in a bralette lately!" she enthused over Twitter on Wednesday. The 20-year-old added: "I just think it's cool to show off what's under your shirt -- whether that's a cute bralette or just skin. ;)"

I’m either braless or in a bralette lately! 👀 the fashion recap on my app https://t.co/e1XHfA8o9d pic.twitter.com/u8f4EmvohX — Kendall (@KendallJenner) September 21, 2016

For Esco and other Free the Nipple organizers, the movement has nothing to do with cute bralettes. Ultimately, the goal is to push the Equal Rights Amendment over the finish line.

"All of this has been leading up to one thing, and that's going to be to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in America," Esco told Vice this week. "Not many people know this, but America doesn't have it in its constitution that men and women are equal. I've already aligned myself with some very powerful women in DC, I'm shooting a docuseries about it, and I've teamed up with change.org to create a petition. It will solve everything from breastfeeding in public to making sure you get paid as much as your male co-workers."



The ERA certainly wouldn't solve everything, but it would "clarify the legal status of sex discrimination for the courts, where decisions still deal inconsistently with such claims," Roberta W. Francis writes on the Alice Paul Institute website.

Now you might be thinking that the ERA fight has already happened, that you read about it in your high-school U.S. history class. That's right: The Equal Rights Amendment made it through the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1972, but when the deadline for ratification by state legislatures passed 10 years later, the effort was still three states shy of the required three-fourths needed.

New York Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney insists the fight for the ERA must go on. "Women have made incredible progress in the past 35 years, but unfortunately judicial attitudes can shift, and Congress can repeal existing laws with a simple majority vote," her website states. "In recent years, there have been efforts to roll back women's rights in education, health, employment and even domestic violence."

So ERA activists are now pursuing the so-called "three-state strategy," arguing that Congress can at any time extend the ratification deadline. Bipartisan resolutions have been introduced in both the House and the Senate that would eliminate the deadline. If Congress does so, the amendment would make it into the Constitution if three more states ratify it.

Esco wants to lead the charge to ratification by raising awareness of the issue and bringing pressure on the 15 state legislatures that didn't ratify the amendment in the 1970s. She says "Free the Nipple is just a platform," a means to get people's attention and get today's young women involved.

"Yes, there are millions of other issues in this world," she said, "but for me, there are no bigger, more important issues than gender equality."

-- Douglas Perry