Petition To Make Nantucket Beaches Topless Gets National Attention

A petition to make all of Nantucket's beaches topless had garnered attention around New England since it was first proposed by island resident Dorothy Stover late last year.

But now the story has gone national. The Associated Press wrote about the petition this week, putting Nantucket in the headlines from coast to coast. The AP article was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle as well as the Bangor (Maine) Daily News, along with many places in between.

The Nantucket Finance Committee recently voted to endorse Stover's petition, and it now heads to the island's Annual Town Meeting with a positive recommendation.

Stover authored the proposal to seek “equality for all genders on all island beaches” by creating a new town bylaw that would make it legal for any person “to be topless on any public or private beach within the Town of Nantucket.” Stover, who was born and raised on the island and is the daughter of the late Town Clerk Catherine Flanagan Stover, is a sex educator who enjoys going to Nantucket’s unofficial nude beach near Miacomet.