The Free the Nipple campaign began as a film project by director Lina Esco in New York City in 2012 and became a global social media movement by 2013–2014, challenging laws and social norms that criminalised or stigmatised women's bare chests while permitting men's. The campaign argued that the bra was not merely a practical garment but a social requirement enforcing different bodily norms for women and men, and that toplessness was as legitimate for women as for men. It attracted celebrity support and provoked legislative debates in several US states.

Free the Nipple generated a wave of spoken-word poetry, feminist slam poetry, and social media verse that explicitly addressed the politics of the bra and women's bodily self-determination. The movement's digital form made it the first mass feminist bodily campaign conducted primarily through social media poetry and visual media rather than pamphlets or protest marches. It directly continued the tradition begun by the Miss America protesters in 1968 and by Amelia Bloomer in 1851.