Recently we told you about a little incident in Brattleboro, Vermont, involving a few teenagers hooping naked in a parking lot. There were no arrests. Since then this small event has been turned into a national media circus.

"We just thought it'd be a little fun," said Charles Corry, 19, who was one of the teens hooping it up in the buff for about 45 minutes with five friends as shoppers, diners and walkers made their way through the lot. "I don't see it as a serious statement." The public nudity celebrations apparently began in earnest this year when one young woman decided she wanted to bare her chest in public, just like her male friends. Little did they know they'd wind up on Dr. Phil.

Theresa Toney, a local conservative reactionary who kicked off the anti-nudity effort when she complained to the Selectboard, was interviewed by a Dr. Phil film crew at Emerson's Furniture in Brattleboro recently. Toney told the press that she didn't want to go on the show, but the crew persisted, so she gave them a five-minute commentary. The show is set to air this Friday, September 8th. "The parking lot is not a strip club," Toney said. "What about children seeing this?"

While the Brattleboro town attorney, Robert Fisher, has been busy presenting options to stop young people from taking their clothes off, including proposing an anti-nudity ordinance, town Chairman Steve Steidle said, "I just wish people would use common sense. Going naked in public is not a good idea."

Apparently the state of Vermont doesn't necessarily agree. State law does not now prohibit nudity in public areas and Brattleboro isn't exactly a stranger to baring it all. It's not unusual to see a few naked swimmers at local swimming holes. The early 1990s brought "Breast Fest" when a group of women walked topless down Main Street. Four years ago, a charity calendar called "Men of Brattleboro" was released, a product that featured prominent male residents, including the local superintendent of schools, in the buff. While a few residents are outraged about the nudity and have managed to get the attention of the press in the process, others think investigating such an ordinance is a waste of the town's time.

It's telling of the times in which we live that a few Vermont teensagers hooping naked downtown is indeed creating such controversy, but it is just the sort of story the conservative media is quick to jump on. The Washington Post was one of the first to get on the bandwagon, even managing to link the handful of teens hooping naked to Vermont being the first state to legalize same-sex civil unions, as if gays and lesbians being allowed to make formal commitments to one another was somehow the cause.

"It's just an act of freedom," said 19-year-old Adhi Palar. "We're just doing so because we can." Palar and the others "do not consider nakedness to be innately sexual or rude and it shouldn't be confined to that," he said. "I don't see why it's such a big deal," said Alec McPherson, a recent high school graduate as he sat at a coffee shop table, browsing a thick volume of artwork from the Metropolitan Museum of Art "Everyone's naked in this book." Ian Bigelow, 23, also explained, "We have a nuclear power plant a few miles away and a ridiculous war in the Middle East, countries getting bombed. So why's it such a big problem if we chose to get nude?" Nevertheless, the story has even become world news.