Activists in Argentina argue that a cultural change is necessary to fight gender violence. They point to the hypocrisy of a society that is bombarded by images of nearly nude women in the media, but that also prohibits women from showing their bodies at will. The Buenos Aires tetazo’s protagonists, perhaps inadvertently, showed what the battle for such a shift might look like. For a few hours, in the chaotic downtown, their flesh-and-blood examples of normal female bodies countered the hypersexualized media images we’ve come to accept as real.

Women of all shapes and sizes gathered under the Obelisk: gray-haired, with children in tow, teenagers with their hair dyed rainbow colors. A father cared for six boys while their mother protested. Mabel Silva, who came alone, told me she wanted to set an example for her granddaughter and daughters. She assured me, in the midst of the crowd, that she wants to change the patriarchal culture. Groups of friends dared to bare themselves, thanks to the protection of other women and abundant paint used to provide a last vestige of modesty. They laughed, at first nervous, then joyful.

“Violence against women’s bodies has become normal,” said Lola Jufra, a member of the feminist group Nosotras Humanistas. “If they can’t tolerate this, they can’t tolerate anything,” she added, bare-breasted.

Demonstrators faced off against the hostile, stalking stares of male spectators flooding the area. “Out macho, out,” chanted women as they forced men to the sidelines and shoved away intrusive photographers. Embittered, many men rationalized their rejection by calling the protesters lesbians (only deviants wouldn’t appreciate such salacious ogling). They disparaged the women’s aesthetic appeal. Perhaps they expected a Playboy poolside party instead of real torsos on parade. More reasonable observers noted an apparent contradiction between the women’s provocative protest and their anger at the predictable type of attention it garnered. But that misses the point: The women want off the pedestal that elevates them as targets.

“We didn’t come to show our breasts, we came to show we are free,” read one demonstrator’s sign.

Of course, a group of combative women forced to cover up at an Argentine beach is not the same as the gory murders that have caused regional commotion. That both things form part of a continuum does not imply that prohibiting bare breasts in public automatically leads to femicide.

Nonetheless, there is a connection between a culture of violence against women and a breast-obsessed society that is scandalized when women’s breasts escape the control of the screen, Photoshop manipulation or artfully exaggerated cleavage to breast-feed in a public space or participate in a relaxed afternoon at the beach. Such fraught symbolism attached to real bodies has proved to be dangerously combustible.

Toplessness is unlikely to become a dominant fashion on our streets. Yet the tetazos’ freedom allowed us to glimpse what a society that rejects the recurring violence of machismo and sexism might look like. I can’t help wishing that such breaths of fresh air could become more frequent.