Much of our current frustration with the censure of female nipples comes down to good old fashioned double standards. Nearly a century later, women still aren’t afforded the same latitude to take their tops off – an especially aggrieving fact as we head towards a week where the UK may hit 40°C for the first time.

“Men don’t show up for work topless. No, it’s the beach. It’s the park on a really hot day. It’s jogging,” Thornton says. “All the places that men can be free, women should be free.” Online, too, women are frequently forced to cover up. Pugh finished her post with the words #freethefuckingnipple – referencing the movement spearheaded by Lina Esco in 2012 in response to Facebook’s (now Meta’s) community guidelines banning the display of women’s nipples.

Some have adopted humorous responses to this binary, retrograde approach. In 2014, the artist Micol Hebron developed an ‘acceptable (male) nipple template’ to use as a pasty over any potentially offending photos of nipples. Today nipples are allowed in various de-sexualised contexts (breastfeeding, post-mastectomy, gender confirmation surgery), but many images still fall foul of the algorithm.

The female nipple is frequently seen as being too much, and not enough. Like so many aspects of the body, it is charged with a series of contradictions and unnavigable expectations. Its very existence is often considered inappropriate or NSFW, even if it belongs to someone breastfeeding or sunbathing. If maternal, it may still be met with disgust or assumptions about gendered care. If non-maternal and visible, it’s considered fair game for commentary, leering and revulsion. A woman may be told, like Pugh, that her breasts are too small. Many more will be told that theirs are too big, too saggy, too lopsided, too sexually inflammatory – i.e. not palatable enough for the stringent demands of the male gaze. Even the mere outline of its appearance beneath clothing can be cause for condemnation or at the very least a leery headline from the Daily Mail. A nipple, let us not forget, is something you can be punished for. When Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s breast at the Super Bowl in 2005, it was her career that suffered rather than his.

How women’s nipples became so disproportionately offensive: a history