WARNING: This article deals with a mature subject and immature people. If you are offended by public discussion of common, everyday, innocuous things, you may want to avoid reading this and most other material.
Women have breasts, and breasts have nipples. I have two of each, and if you’re a woman I’ll bet you do too. Men have ‘em too, sorta. I made the discovery that women have breasts just minutes after I was born, and it came as welcome news. Actually, I don’t think I gave it much thought, it just seemed right to me at the time.
I didn’t discover that the female breast, and particularly its nipple subpart, are obscene until I was six years old. It was then that my mother began insisting that I wear a shirt when playing outside. Up to that point I hadn’t spent much time at all considering my breasts except to dread the day when, like my mother and other grownup women, I would be required to wear one of those bra contraptions. Wearing shoes seemed almost unbearably confining to me. Binding up my chest in a hot, awkward, uncomfortable halter, seemed too much! It was anything but an attractive prospect.
Now, it’s important to understand one thing up front. I’m a prude. I’m as straight-laced, prim and proper as they come. I don’t like dirty jokes, dirty pictures, dirty language or sexual innuendo unless it’s Prentice doing the innuendoing. I have never understood, though, how the obscenization (yeah, I made up the word) and hiding of the female breast promotes modesty, chastity or good taste.
“Parts is parts.” That’s my take on things. Breasts are no different than elbows. Breasts are useful and good, as I discovered at the age of three minutes, and the fact that some regard them as pleasant to the eye doesn’t detract from their God-given right to be free.
So, why am I harping on the subject of breasts today? Facebook. It’s Facebook that has stuck a pin in my rear and gotten me all riled up about breasts… again!
A couple of years ago Facebook decided that photographs of mothers nursing their babies, all in the most modest and beautiful way, are obscene if they contain the slightest hint of a nipple or areola. As far as I am aware, all breastfeeding involves both nipples and areola, so I’m guessing that all breastfeeding photos would be obscene by Facebook’s standards. Photos of half, quarter and tenth-clad slutty starlets in provocative poses are okay in Facebook’s book, but the spectacle of a precious infant nursing at his mother’s breast is obscene!
Facebook removed dozens of photos posted by members of a breastfeeding mother’s group and threatened several with removal of their Facebook pages. Protests ensued, including a march in front of Facebook’s headquarters, but all to no avail. Breasts, nipples, areola and common sense remain banned at Facebook. Apparently, for good.
Now the Facebook nipple police have struck again, this time lashing out against even porcelain breasts. Yes, believe it or not, Facebook has determined that, in addition to photos of actual female breasts, doll parts representing female breasts are obscene as well! Not just obscene, but obscene per se.
Victoria Buckley, an Australian designer, creates jewelry. Beautiful jewelry. She also creates compelling advertising for her jewelry which she promotes in several venues, including on a Facebook fan page. Her advertising product photos are staged with intriguing, finely crafted “nude” porcelain dolls. (See the photo that accompanies this article.) The ads do what ads are intended to do—get the customer’s attention.
The dolls are not arranged in any sexually suggestive pose. For the most part, the photos depict the dolls doing nothing more than admiring the jewelry. The offending photos do, however, contain representations of bare female breasts, nipples and areola—more than enough to damn them and Ms. Buckley. Upon discovery of the photos, Facebook acted quickly to take them down and issued Ms. Buckley a stern warning. Women are allowed on Facebook. Breasts are not. Not ever. Never, never, never!
Why is all of this silliness about breasts and nipples important? Well, it is important. It’s important because it is a glaring example of what has become a near culturally institutionalized boneheadedness of Americans which renders them incapable of appreciating all subtlety, nuance, gradation and context. We are becoming a society that mindlessly follows rules giving no thought to the reason or purpose behind the rule. We are becoming a non-discerning people. A stupid, boring, repressive, angry and befuddled people, all by choice.
The rules say that exposed nipples constitute nudity, and nudity is obscene. It’s obscene. It’s always obscene. Obscene every time. On the other hand, slutty, lewd, sexually provocative dancing while singing songs with sexually suggestive lyrics, as in countless music vidcos posted on Facebook fan pages, is not obscene behavior so long as all nipples remain hidden. This makes sense, right? It’s the nipples that are important! Clearly, the rules of modesty were intended to protect young minds from the debilitating effects of exposure to human breasts and doll parts, not promiscuous public displays. Why was I thinking otherwise? Thank God that we have Facebook to vigilantly enforce the rule.
On another, but somehow related, note the matter of skinny-dipping pops into my mind. Skinny-dipping. You know, swimming in the creek (or anywhere else, I guess) without benefit of a bathing suit. Flopping around in the water au natural, if you will. I think there has always been some kind of rule against skinny-dipping, but one that has been very casually enforced in rural areas such as where I grew up. I’m not saying that I ever did it, but…
This Saturday throngs of rule breakers will gather at nudist parks throughout North America in an attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the world’s largest skinny-dip event. They hope to break a record established last year when 13,648 rule breakers simultaneously took the plunge. No photos will be posted on Facebook.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Maybe the people that have the power at FB are breast repressed? Whatever. I’m glad you called this to our attention. In fact, I have posted this on my Facebook page and would hope that all of my Facebook “friends” repost your comments.
By the way, I too am a bit of a prude. Even though I’ve been known to wear a nudist tee shirt or two. Just wondering if you know where location of the skinny dipping activity nearest Middle Tennessee. Not saying I’ll cancel my plans to attend church…
Bravo!
You mean the skinny dippers are organized? There are nudist parks throughout North America? I need to know more about this. I should spend more time skinny dipping and less time on Facebook!
First, allow me to admit that I’m a red-blooded American male, and female breasts if presented provocatively WILL provoke me. A well-endowed woman passing me or sitting near me on a bus with no bra and a very low neckline will get my attention (erotically) in a heartbeat.
Okay, so I’ve confessed that I have a “boob fetish”!
Getting past that & getting serious, I’m right there with you, Mary Ann, in your beef against FB regarding censorship of photos of mothers w/babies nursing at the breast, and their censorship of porcelain artwork depicting the unclothed female breast. I, too, am “a prude. . . prim & proper. . . don’t like dirty language” etc. But as you say, “Parts is parts” and depictions (artistic or photographic) of a woman’s breast are quite all right and hardly obscene or provocative!
If FB wants to clean up America, I’d suggest they turn away from such “tame” stuff, and go to the foot of Music Row, light a stick or two of TNT and obliterate the obscene colossus there! And then let FB lobby media moguls to clean up television so it’s fit for families to watch again!