#FreeThePeach protesters strip down at Gold Coast beach to fight G-string ban calls
Locals have turned out in G-strings and mankinis to protest calls for the skimpy swimwear to be banned on Australian beaches.
Crowds are bearing their bums on a Gold Coast beach to protest calls for a G-string bikini ban.
The #freethepeach walk kicked off at Kurrawa beachfront from 6am on Friday, with dozens of locals donning their skimpiest swimwear to advocate for the right to wear what they want at the beach.
The community is rallying against comments made by 2022 Gold Coast Volunteer of the Year and Youth Music Venture festival founder Ian Grace saying women and girls who wear G-strings to the beach are “cheapening themselves”.
“I think the conversation is so much wider,” Barr Body Swim owner Rebecca Pask said during a live cross to Today.
“Children and our young girls in society, we do need to teach them what’s appropriate and what’s not but that starts in the home.
“A bikini blanket ban was never going to be the solution. Never. Not on the Gold Coast.”
It’s understood radio presenter Bianca Dye and influencers Rhiannon O’Loughlin and Brooke Michelle Woods were all in attendance at the rally.
Mr Grace first made his concerns known in a letter to the city’s mayor Tom Tate, saying he has become distracted recently by women wearing triangle bikinis on the beach.
“One young lady in particular was walking on the footpath on the main road and had the tiniest triangle in front and was as close to naked as anyone could be,” he wrote.
“You could see she was looking almost defiantly at people as they approached, almost daring them to say something. There’s something very wrong here.
“While any man would enjoy ‘the view’, I believe women are very much demeaning and cheapening themselves, portraying themselves as sex objects, then decrying it when men see them that way.”
Media personality Abbie Chatfield called out Mr Grace’s comments as sexist on social media on Wednesday.
“Imagine going on the Project to expose yourself as a misogynist,” she said in a video shared to her Instagram.
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