NEW YORK (AP) — In the heart of Times Square, a grinning 2-year-old boy is flanked by a pair of strikingly posed, topless women, wearing only red, white and blue paint over their breasts, thongs, feathery headdresses and high heels. Facing what they see as a cringe-worthy crisis after decades of scrubbing Times Square's once-sleazy image, some city officials are now proposing to confine both the topless women and the costumed characters working alongside them to designated "activity zones." Tim Tompkins, president of the influential Times Square Alliance business group, told a WNYC radio interviewer this summer that "one of these naked ladies literally made a woman cry" by threatening to punch her when asked to cover up. City Councilman Corey Johnson, a member of a hastily convened city task force that has proposed the "activity zones," says the city must ease pedestrian crowding by setting some restrictions — whether on topless women, costumed characters or tourist bus rides. Legal experts say the quandary is whether the women's activity amounts to a street performance protected by the First Amendment or a form of commerce that can be regulated. Civil rights attorney Ron Kuby noted that there's nothing illegal in New York City about going topless or asking people for money.