Nothing nefarious about nudity
Between moving and the ensuing family visits, I've been in a time crunch so I'm late in weighing in Garance Franke-Ruta's WSJ piece about the slimeball series Girls Gone Wild. I have agree with Avedon on this one. While I understand Garance's concern, the last thing we need is more nanny laws to protect young adults from their own mistakes. The mere suggestion that an 18 year old is incapable of making a wise decision without legal intervention strikes me as an insult to all the responsible young people who can, and do so, every day.
It goes without saying that the guy who makes these videos is a sleaze bag who deserves to go to jail for a lot of reasons but in the end we're talking about a chosen few of the "coddled class" of teenagers. The reason they make bad choices in the first place is that they've been so insulated from having to take responsibility for their actions by well meaning parents who want to "protect" them. They didn't think of the consequences because they never had to face them. Besides, I'm more concerned about the binge drinking than I am about the nudity or the psuedo-sex.
I think it's healthy that these girls feel confident enough in their own bodies to show them. When done for the joie de vive, it's actually quite beautiful and empowering and I speak from experience. Somewhere out there in certain skydiving circles, I'm sure there still circulates a series of nude photos of myself on an airfield, flashing a jump plane as it was taking off. It didn't ruin my life. In fact, when my own copy occassionally surfaces while I'm looking for something else, I smile at the remembrance of a moment in time when I was young and felt gorgeous. Not to mention, the shots are sublimely artful.
It's only the exploiting for profit that makes an experience like that ugly and I don't think further criminalizing nudity would prevent that. It would merely create a whole new class of criminals of people who hold nude photos with no exploitive intent.
It goes without saying that the guy who makes these videos is a sleaze bag who deserves to go to jail for a lot of reasons but in the end we're talking about a chosen few of the "coddled class" of teenagers. The reason they make bad choices in the first place is that they've been so insulated from having to take responsibility for their actions by well meaning parents who want to "protect" them. They didn't think of the consequences because they never had to face them. Besides, I'm more concerned about the binge drinking than I am about the nudity or the psuedo-sex.
I think it's healthy that these girls feel confident enough in their own bodies to show them. When done for the joie de vive, it's actually quite beautiful and empowering and I speak from experience. Somewhere out there in certain skydiving circles, I'm sure there still circulates a series of nude photos of myself on an airfield, flashing a jump plane as it was taking off. It didn't ruin my life. In fact, when my own copy occassionally surfaces while I'm looking for something else, I smile at the remembrance of a moment in time when I was young and felt gorgeous. Not to mention, the shots are sublimely artful.
It's only the exploiting for profit that makes an experience like that ugly and I don't think further criminalizing nudity would prevent that. It would merely create a whole new class of criminals of people who hold nude photos with no exploitive intent.
Labels: culture, legislation, society
posted by Libby Spencer at 7:57 PM
2 Comments:
Considering how few Americans descend from Puritans, the influence is amazingly strong. You can't expect reasonableness in a country where the Attorney General puts drapes on a chrome statue about as sexy as a Packard hood ornament. Of course when I smell moral outrage, I look for lawyers and usually find them.
It never ceases to amaze me how uptight Americans are about nudity and sex Fogg. It's like they all believe they were products of immaculate conception or something.
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