Dude.
The title is *totally* misleading. This post isn’t only about nipples *at all*.
Etymologically, the word “pornography” means “one who writes about prostitutes”. In modern translation, it means Naughty Naughty pictures. People are Very Upset about pornography. I think those people need to really figure out what it is that bothers them, and settle the crap down about everything else.
First, what the hell is wrong with nudity? Either we were created or we evolved to look the way we do, and there’s nothing to be ashamed about. Everyone…MOST everyone has the same bits, in different permutations. Why are we so scared to *TALK* about our bodies, much less reveal our bodies? Why is that? Is this modesty that’s come from social convention?
Okay, sure, I can see the discussion coming. It’s because of religion. It’s because from the first time the first person told the story the first time about how Adam and Eve “knew their nakedness”, we’ve been ashamed of our bodies. But let’s be realistic.
And what’s wrong with looking at naked bodies?
I want to make a distinction here, and that is that what *I* find disgusting isn’t pictures of nekkit folks, or movies of folks parking the Plymouth, it’s pictures in magazines and on television and in movies of people whose skin is flawless and whose hair is perfect and whose nails are manicured and who can afford the clothes that fit, and who have the ability to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal trainers and liposuction and airbrushing and the perfect five-o’clock shadow. THAT’s what I find disgusting, demoralising, and wrong.
I hear people talk about how it’s wrong to objectify a person by turning them from a human being into a sex object. Do you know who does that? The person who internalises that way. And if you internalise that way, there’s something seriously wrong with you that I don’t think nekkit pictures caused. What *did* cause it? I don’t know. What makes people devalue one another, what makes people see each other as something other than people? Probably fear.
And who is more objectified: the entertainer who himself or herself becomes a commodity, or the person who paints or photographs nudes? Is this an argument of smut v. art? I don’t know.
Where did this come from?
Well, I read this article, which talks about how Steve Jobs apparently decided that the iPad would not be used to view pornography. Who defines pornography here? Apparently, according to the article, it’s Steve Jobs. And then this has become a discussion about censorship.
I’m all over the map, here, and can’t pinpoint what it is I’m trying to say. What does it matter if you can spy a nipple on a catwalk model? Isn’t it more important that many of these women are malnourished and unhealthy?
It’s one of these things I have trouble reconciling. Sex is a commodity; just like anything else. I don’t know if it’s always been this way; some people say that prostitution is “the oldest profession”. Perhaps it is. Pornography, as we understand it now, is a kind of voyeurism, isn’t it? It permits us glimpses into a fantasy world where the participants are all eager and free of morality and consequence. Is that so bad? What makes “pornography” different from “erotica”? Just the pictures? Although “erotica” is often considered a subset of “pornography”.
Anyway, I don’t really know what I’m trying to say, except that I don’t think pictures of nipples are going to destroy the world.
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.