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Nipple Rings vs. Metal Detectors

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By Bonnie Goldstein
Posted Monday, March 31, 2008, at 1:58 PM ET

Gloria Allred, who represents victims of harassment, discrimination, and wrongful termination, is "the most famous woman attorney practicing law in the nation today," according to her own Web site. That immodest judgment would be hard to dispute. In her storied career, Allred has filed an amicus brief in Paula Corbin Jones v. William Jefferson Clinton; represented Amber Frey, Scott Peterson's mistress, during Peterson's 2004 double-murder trial; and, recently, taken on Heather Mills as a client after the activist/fashion model divorced Paul McCartney. At a packed press conference last week, Allred announced her latest cause: the alleged harassment of a graphic artist named Mandi Hamlin by officials of the Transportation Security Administration at the Lubbock, Texas airport. At issue is whether the TSA followed a humane protocol for women who wear nipple rings.

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In a letter (see below and on the following two pages) Allred describes the February incident. Hamlin, Allred writes, was nearly barred from a Southwest Airlines flight to Dallas because of her numerous metal piercings. When the hand-held metal detector beeped near Hamlin's "left breast" (below), Hamlin offered to confirm that her nipple rings did not constitute a deadly weapon by showing them to a female TSA agent. Instead, Hamlin was led behind a "dark curtain" where she was forced to remove them with "the help of pliers" while "a growing number of predominantly-male TSA officers" could be heard "snickering in the background" (Page 3). This was, Allred argues, not only cruel but also at odds with the TSA's own policy, which states that a "pat-down inspection" is sufficient and leaves the question of whether to remove the body piercing as an alternative to a pat-down entirely in the hands of the airline passenger. At the press conference, Allred demonstrated the painful and humiliating procedure using a mannequin and a brassiere (see video), then demanded that the Department of Homeland Security make "a public apology." TSA, for its part, says it appreciates Hamlin's "raising awareness on this issue" and sincerely "regrets the situation in which she found herself." The agency says it is "changing the procedures to ensure that this does not happen again."

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