An Inspired Chat with Cleo M of Portland

We recently had the chance to connect with Cleo M and have shared our conversation below.

Cleo, we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: What do you think is misunderstood about your business? 
Thanks for the interview and the opportunity to share my story! As to your question, it should be painfully obvious to anyone who actually listens to what I’m saying, but there are two huge misunderstandings about my content that I repeatedly run into, and find infuriatingly frustrating every time:
1. that I’m using my “female-presenting nipples” as “clickbait” and don’t actually care about normalizing nonsexual female nipples outside of sexually explicit situations
2. that I’m advocating for FULL BODY nudity, including genitals
Regarding point 1, I’m stuck “between a rock and a hard place” where because female nipples are viewed by American society as “sexually explicit,” regardless of context, there is no state of being or activity I could do with my shirt off that WOULDN’T be sexualized. I could be cleaning a toilet while topless, and if anyone saw video of me doing it, they would most likely view it as fetish material. However, as long as female nipples are only allowed to be seen in ACTUALLY sexual situations, then the association between “female nipples” and “sexually explicit” will never be challenged by the average person, even if they might otherwise support the idea of topless equality if the idea was ever presented to them in a neutral fashion.
Regarding point 2, I was actually born and raised a nudist, and have no problem with genitals being visible in public either as long as the owner of the genitals isn’t touching themselves, grinding against anything, or otherwise being overtly sexual. However, in recent years, I’ve really been pushing against the nudist label in large part because of the sizeable nudist population–almost predominantly cis men–who have co-opted my fight for topless equality to use me as a youngish, femaleish, conventionally attractiveish representation of FULL body nudity. Essentially, they’re just reinforcing the blatantly sexist/misogynistic status quo belief that “female nipples” are “nudity” but somehow “male nipples” aren’t. I still have a lot of nudists in my community, even cis male ones, but the ones that stick around understand that the fight for gender equality and the fight for normalizing genitals are two very different issues that are only tangentially related.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hi! My name is Cleo, or in some places Ceri, and I’m a longtime “content creator” as well as activist for a variety of progressive political issues (like racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights, universal healthcare, climate action, etc), with a special focus on topless equality, aka #freethenipple. While I’ve been making videos about a wide variety of subjects since the very first year Youtube was founded, ten years ago I started my channel “Topless Topics,” which as my video tagline says–“the channel that seeks to highlight the blatant sexism, misogyny and transphobia of gender-based censorship, one heinous female nipple at a time.” In those videos, I discuss a subject relevant to the causes I’m fighting for–often how they intersect with my other interests, like female and People of Color representation in video games–as well as interview interesting people (like fellow commentary video essayists, erotic fiction writers, adult film actors, artists, scholars, and more), and occasionally event coverage, like political protest rallies or conventions like Vidcon.

I’m always trying to improve my videos, and I have big plans to make more informative, researched, planned-out “video essay” style videos, rather than the “turn on the camera and rant about a subject or issue I’m fired up about for twenty minutes” style that a lot of my older videos trend towards. I’m also applying more ambitious standards to the people I’m asking to interview–I don’t want to stay pidgeon-holed into only interviewing nudists, erotic artists and sex workers, and rather have deep and meaningful conversations about the types of topics I care about with people with “broader,” more mainstream appeal. While I fully support decriminalizing sex work and supporting erotic artists and authors, as long as I am only interviewing fellow “controversial”/brand-unfriendly creators, the reach of my activism comment is limited to only a niche audience, and the only way large-scale societal change can happen is if a LOT of people take notice and make their voices heard.

Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
I can’t think of an exact moment that I really started to chafe at the injustice of gender-based censorship, but it’s something that over the ten years since I started my channel, I couldn’t help noticing the blatant discrimination against “female-presenting nipples” when it comes to going without a shirt in public or online. Anyone who “looks male” can go without a shirt pretty much anywhere outside and on the internet, while those who “look female” can ONLY go without a shirt (at least in the US) in the few places that allow full body nudity like clothing-optional beaches, or porn sites. I really started to notice this distinction when I started to get a lot of cis male nudist followers on Twitter–who as I said in the other answer, would ignore my fight for topless equality to use me as a more “attractive” face for their cause for genital freedom. Dealing with their default links between “female nipples” to “nudity” made me realize how different topless equality and genital freedom are–one is about challenging puritanical beliefs against nonsexual nudity, and the other is about BLATANT sexism and transphobia, and honestly should be a lot easier to change than trying to get most people to not care about seeing genitals, when so many Americans at least like to think of themselves as not hating and controlling women.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
I’ll admit I’m at times a pretty bitter person, and a lot of it comes from a torturous childhood full of brutal bullying. I wasn’t so much physically beat up by my peers, but I was constantly ostracized for being “weird” and had extremely few friends, most of whom used me for my travel-writer-father’s connections (like free visits to Disneyland). It’s shaped my overall low opinion of most of humanity, something that current events have done very little to dissuade me from. There ARE good people out there–of course they are–but they seem to be in the minority, and are so often trampled under the boots of those who would willingly and maliciously do harm, or at the least only care about their own comforts and rights ahead of others.

However, I think my difficult childhood taught me a resiliency that has kept me going in my fight for equality, no matter the years of constant nonsensical, arbitrary bans and the cruelty of hateful comments. There is a trend I’ve noticed in a lot of leftist spaces of censoring or eliminating anything that might make someone uncomfortable, and ultimately I think that harms both that person and society as a whole, because it prevents meaningful change as long as those with the power to unite and change the status quo can isolate themselves into inoculated chambers where they can simply ignore the bad stuff that upsets them. I’m not advocating for intentionally triggering individuals into trauma, or saying that we shouldn’t have ANY “safe spaces”–I’m talking mostly about the attitude I see in a lot of online spaces where uncomfortable things like racism, sexual assault, etc are just as censored by leftists as conservatives so that no one has to consider these subjects if they don’t want to “put in the work” to face these issues and do what they can to challenge them.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Is the public version of you the real you?
A lot of content creators and influencers have curated versions of themselves that they present online (and unfortunately, a lot of them also purport a false claim of “authenticity” when they’re actually just presenting a manufactured product…but that’s a whole separate issue), but quite simply, I’ve never been like that. Playing as a character can be fun, and there have been a few instances where I play-acted as a character, usually to make a point about the issues I’m fighting for (like a gender-reversal skit I created where topless women at the beach act with revulsion when their male friend shows up also topless). But the bulk of my videos and livestreams is just me being me–maybe a little more talkative and assertive, but still it’s really me. Scripting my videos is actually pretty new territory for me, and I still don’t feel comfortable doing it (I feel like reading from a script instead of speaking off-the-cuff feels wooden and less authentic), but I’m trying to improve at it anyway, as I do think my advocacy would be more effective and engaging if I colored my thoughts with more relevant data, quotes from others with experience regarding the topics I’m talking about, etc.

Of course, I have quite an overt personality, and it’s not for everyone…those who do engage with my community often, especially during my livestreams where I edit video, draw pages for my “Day in the Life of a Topfree Activist” webcomic, play games, or just chat, even have jokes about “Cleo being Cleo” when I set off on another rant!

Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
This is actually kind of a scary question, because the reality is that both my parents died of cancer (my mom died of colon cancer five years ago, and my dad died of gallbladder cancer just last November) so my chances of also developing cancer are very high, and while there are some treatments available, there are no guaranteed “cures.” So I know I’m on a “ticking clock,” as it were. As such, I’ve been in the process of, but really intend to work harder towards forcing myself to stop jumping from passion to passion, and instead come up with and follow concrete action plans so that I can finish one project before I move on to another. There are so many things I’m interested in and trying to do all at once–record more interviews, plan out and create more thorough topic-based videos, create more art, write a fantasy novel, be a better parent, clean and organize the house, etc etc etc–and because I’m so split between different focuses, I end up accomplishing little towards any of my goals. Even though I might WANT to work on different projects, I don’t want to keep wasting time achieving little, and would rather redirect my efforts into finishing one thing at a time. Especially if I knew for certain that I’d no longer be here in ten years.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Everything was created by me, Cleo of Topless Topics.

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