She exposed her breast while protesting for women’s rights in Virginia. She was just released from jail.

The two activists, Natalie White, an artist and vice president of the advocacy group Equal Means Equal, and Michelle Renay Sutherland, were reenacting Virginia’s state seal, which depicts the deity Virtus, breast bared with a spear and a sword in hand, standing over a man — Tyranny — who is splayed on the ground with his crown fallen nearby.

White played Tyranny. Sutherland, 45, was Virtus — the genius of the Commonwealth, the state explains, and the personification of virtue. Her left breast was exposed as part of the costume.

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Sutherland was arrested and booked Monday on a charge of indecent exposure, a misdemeanor.

She was released from jail Thursday after being initially held without bail — an unusually strict measure given the low-level crime she was charged with. Her next court appearance is scheduled for March 21.

Judge Lawrence B. Cann III allowed Sutherland to be released without posting any bond after initially ordering her held indefinitely, the woman’s lawyer, David Baugh, said. Cann explained his initial decision to hold her without bail by saying the only information that he had in front of him at the time was that she had made an obscene display of her body — not that she was in Virginia as part of a protest, Baugh said.

“As far as he knew she’s a flasher,” Baugh said. “He said, ‘When I denied you bond you had no ties to Virginia, and this is all I had in front of me.’”

Sutherland’s detention on such a minor charge drew local media attention, amid a heated battle in Virginia over the Equal Rights Amendment.

“Showing a breast as part of a satirical act of protest is not obscene,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia tweeted. “The real obscenity at the Capitol is lawmakers standing in the way of constitutional equality against the will of the people.”

“This is ridiculous that she would get held without bond for doing an artistic reenactment for standing up for equal rights for women,” White told The Washington Post. “This is obviously politically motivated. They’re trying to send us a clear sign that they’re trying to silence women in Virginia.”

The arrest

The arrest happened Monday around 3:30 p.m., said Joseph Macenka, a spokesman for the Virginia Capitol Police.

“Officers identified themselves, asked her several times to cover up her left breast,” Macenka said. “Instead of doing that she arranged her clothing in such a manner so that both of her breasts were then exposed."

She was taken to the Richmond City Justice Center jail, where she was booked on a single count of indecent exposure, Macenka said.

‘I was sitting in jail with women who have murder charges’

In a phone interview shortly after her release, Sutherland, 45, an artist and activist who goes by the name “Sister Leona,” told The Washington Post that said she didn’t know whether she’d be held until her trial date, in mid-March.

“I was sitting in jail with women who have murder charges, and here I am a protester,” she said. “I was very surprised that I didn’t get out that same day.”

She said she passed the time by talking to the 25 other women she was housed with — about what they were in for, how to play spades and the cause she had been protesting for, the Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional measure that aims to ensure equal rights for women. Sutherland said she led an informal hour-long class at the jail about the ERA, which is currently the subject of a political fight in Richmond.

‘She should win’

Kevin Martingayle, a lawyer in Virginia Beach and former president of the Virginia State Bar, told the Times-Dispatch that he believes Sutherland’s action was political speech and therefore “entitled to the highest free speech protection known to law.”

“She should win, and the denial of bond seems to be totally inappropriate,” he said before her release. "I am very surprised to see that done in a case in which she’d be unlikely to get jail time even if convicted.”

Cann did not return a message left at the number listed for him in public records on Wednesday evening.

Controversy over ratifying the ERA

The ERA, which would bar discrimination based on sex if ratified by three-quarters of the states, was introduced 95 years ago by suffragist Alice Paul. By 1982, 35 states had passed it, three shy of the total needed for ratification. The effort languished for years but has gained renewed prominence recently.

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Nevada and Illinois have since passed the amendment; Virginia would be the 38th and last state needed to ratify it, though there are discussions about whether time has expired on the amendment. It is not clear it will get to that point, however. In the past seven years, it has died five times in the state’s Republican-controlled House of Delegates after passing in the Senate and is believed to be a long shot to pass this year before the end of the legislature’s session Saturday.

Still activists and organizations have focused their attention on the state, buying billboards along Interstate 95, taking out newspaper ads and mailing thousands of postcards.

Kati Hornung, campaign coordinator of VAratifyERA, which is advocating the bill’s passage, said Sutherland’s arrest and subsequent detention was proof of the need for the ERA.

Sutherland said she was disappointed by her arrest.

“We were out there protesting as well as wearing the costumes of the state seal,” she said. “Ironic isn’t even the word, I was definitely angry. To be sexualized in that way — we’re just out here speaking up for women.”

Patricia Sullivan contributed to this report.