Mexican Democratic Revolution Party candidate Natalia Juarez poses in front of a banner depicting herself and other activists posing topless in Guadalajara
Despite the recent controversy over our cover story of two weeks ago, TIME is not as obsessed with women’s breasts as some might think. Still, the uncovered bosom of a Mexican politician caught our eye.
Natalia Juarez, a 34-year-old philosophy professor, not only decided to run for her nation’s congress in her home town of Guadalajara, but in her words she wanted the country to “get energized.”
“We need to tell people, ‘Hey, wake up because if you don’t, sharks are going to eat you up. Wake up, you citizen and politician,” said Juarez, who is running for the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution told CNN.
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So to do this, she placed the billboards above busy streets in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city, depicting herself and six other women nude from the waist up, arms covering their chests. The billboard reads: “I dare you to build a new project for a nation with no prejudices.”
Juarez says she decided to go topless to show Mexicans that they need to approach solutions in a radical way. For example, she advocates the legalization of drugs as a way to combat the rampant drug cartel violence that has swept the nation.
Conservatives, she says, have levied the expected criticism and Guadalajara itself is widely seen as a conservative town. But Juarez doesn’t expect much support from the right, either. “Even if I dressed as a nun and carried a rosary and said that my party was going to give away Bibles and rosaries, they wouldn’t.”
Mexico will hold presidential and legislative elections on July 1.
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