Pixelate this...
Jan. 9th, 2006 10:24![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mapsedgeEven when I don't agree with it, I understand the need for television networks to "fuzz" stuff out from time to time. Nevertheless that fuzzing irritates me when it smacks of double standards.
There is a show on the Discovery Health channel called Plastic Surgery: Before and After. This show gets my attention only when there isn't anything else going on in that time slot and I want to be sitting watching TV. I use this show as my example, and it serves as an archetype for just about every television show out there that deals with nudity in any context - with the exception of Alex Haley's Roots, aired on network television in prime time without obscuring the nudity. But that was okay. That was cultural context.
The episode we'll take as our whipping boy featured two breast reduction procedures. Procedure A was a for a young woman who went from a comfortable pre-pregnancy 38C to something in the double-digit upper alphabet. Procedure B was for a man who had lost three-hundred pounds and needed surgery to remove the excess skin created by such radical change.
The short version goes like this: fuzz the woman, show the man in all his stretch-marky glory. Now, you may argue, of course you want to look at a woman with her top off, Bill, and you'd be right, but let us remember that this is a woman well outside the range of "classical" beauty who might no longer qualify for that argument. It's not about the boobs, it's about the fuzz and the double standard in action. Nudity in a medical context, mind you, not nudity in the context of, say, Blame it on Rio.
The MPAA does this too, btw, somewhat in reverse: Mound of Venus, okay. No penises, thanks anyway.
There really isn't a conclusion to this. I'm just expressing a frustration that, as a society, we haven't gotten over "it" yet. Oooh, ooh, here it comes: we must protect our children! Says I, Yes, we must, by all means possible! Protect their innocence for as long as we can. My daughter, at five years old, has no problem with nakedness, her own or anyone else's, in person or on TV. For as long as she is comfortable with it, mljm and I won't worry at home about clothing for clothing's sake. Sex is a completely unknown concept for her, which is fine, but in her world everybody has a butt, front and back, so what's the big deal?
Yeah. What's the big deal?
There is a show on the Discovery Health channel called Plastic Surgery: Before and After. This show gets my attention only when there isn't anything else going on in that time slot and I want to be sitting watching TV. I use this show as my example, and it serves as an archetype for just about every television show out there that deals with nudity in any context - with the exception of Alex Haley's Roots, aired on network television in prime time without obscuring the nudity. But that was okay. That was cultural context.
The episode we'll take as our whipping boy featured two breast reduction procedures. Procedure A was a for a young woman who went from a comfortable pre-pregnancy 38C to something in the double-digit upper alphabet. Procedure B was for a man who had lost three-hundred pounds and needed surgery to remove the excess skin created by such radical change.
The short version goes like this: fuzz the woman, show the man in all his stretch-marky glory. Now, you may argue, of course you want to look at a woman with her top off, Bill, and you'd be right, but let us remember that this is a woman well outside the range of "classical" beauty who might no longer qualify for that argument. It's not about the boobs, it's about the fuzz and the double standard in action. Nudity in a medical context, mind you, not nudity in the context of, say, Blame it on Rio.
The MPAA does this too, btw, somewhat in reverse: Mound of Venus, okay. No penises, thanks anyway.
There really isn't a conclusion to this. I'm just expressing a frustration that, as a society, we haven't gotten over "it" yet. Oooh, ooh, here it comes: we must protect our children! Says I, Yes, we must, by all means possible! Protect their innocence for as long as we can. My daughter, at five years old, has no problem with nakedness, her own or anyone else's, in person or on TV. For as long as she is comfortable with it, mljm and I won't worry at home about clothing for clothing's sake. Sex is a completely unknown concept for her, which is fine, but in her world everybody has a butt, front and back, so what's the big deal?
Yeah. What's the big deal?
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 16:41 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 16:41 (UTC)Oh my god, I love that movie, I have not even thought of it in years. I wonder if we have it around here somewhere?
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 16:48 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 17:12 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 17:12 (UTC)I really miss living where the only hangups they have about nudity are the ones the puritains among us have exported. I'd not give up my country for love nor money, but boy, could the new world learn a lot from the old in some respects!
so true
Date: 2006-01-09 17:22 (UTC)Quite the controversy.
Puritanical Pagans make me homicidal.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 18:20 (UTC)