It’s been nearly 20 years since Gwen Jacob took a history-making topless jaunt through downtown Guelph.

It’s been 15 years since charges against her were overturned in a case that gave Ontarian woman the legal right to be topless in public — a right previously exclusive to men.

On Saturday, blocks away from where Jacob bravely bared her breasts, dozens of women and men took their shirts off for Top Freedom Day of Pride — an event aimed at desensitizing the masses to the female breast.

Event organizers Andrea Crinklaw and Lindsay Webb, both students at the University of Guelph, say woman may have the legal right to bare chests, but they do not have the social freedom to do it comfortably.

They want women to be comfortable without tops on in the same places where men roam shirtless.

“If it could be like in Europe where women are able to be top-free on the beaches or roller blade down the street without a shirt and people aren’t appalled by it — that would be amazing,” Crinklaw said.

Jacob was 19 when she had her topless day in Guelph. She a female friend were walking through campus on a blistering July day in 1991 when they saw a group of male students — naked from the waste up — playing sports.

Jacob and her friend, who were fully clothed at the time, mused about the inequality of the situation. Then Jacob decided to do something about it. She was later arrested and charged with committing an indecent act.

For years after she won her court battle, Jacob told the Star Saturday, she was known as “that woman from Guelph who took her shirt off.”

“I have no idea what I was getting myself into,” she said. “I was young and it completely took over my life.”

Jacob, who has avoided the limelight since then, didn’t attend Saturday’s event in Guelph. She said she became jaded after seeing how the media covered her story. She said the focus was on the sexual aspect — “the T and A” — instead of the human rights issue at stake.

She worried that would become focus of the Guelph event and that “flocks of gawkers” would show up and ruin the experience.

“It truly is a liberating experience,” she said. “When I took off my shirt I actually took off the definition of who I was supposed to be.”

“I hope the environment is conducive to that.”

It didn’t start out that way.

About 50 observers — mostly male — sat in St. George’s Square in downtown Guelph waiting for the event to begin.

Crinklaw and Webb were among the first to peel off their tops in what started out as a painfully shy event. Only a handful of women took their shirts off in the first hour.

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The people with cameras and dark glasses may have had something to do with it.

“If you are here just to see boobs and be creepy, we encourage you to move on,” Webb told the crowd.

“We want to have a safe space here for women to exercise their right to be top free,” co-organizer Andrea Crinklaw said. “Women, we want you to be empowered. Men, we want you to be supportive. And everybody, be respectful.”

Cheers, applause and a few cat calls followed.

Carolyn Munroe, 56, and Tina Frieson, 42, came planning to bare their chests.

“We’re hoping to do it, and our husbands are hoping that we do it, but I just feel that we’re a little bit on display right now,” Munroe said.

Live music and professional body painters helped to ease the crowd out of its initial awkwardness. By late afternoon a few dozen men and women were dancing, laughing and mingling – shirtless and smiling. Most of the gawkers disappeared.

In the end, Munroe and Frieson went for it. Munroe had three kinds of colourful flowers painted across her chest. Frieson went with two red roses and a yellow smiley face over one nipple.

Phil Longstaff, 50, sat shirtless in the square, his chest painted with bright balloons.

He said he doesn’t understand why women’s breasts are still considered such a highly sexual object by society.

“We got over ankles,” he said. “Why can’t we get over breasts?”