Academic

Nipples and Liberals

By Ann Bartow

An Adrants blogger opined:

… This is America. Nudity is bad. Nudity is something to be shunned. Natural beauty? Screw that. Put a potato sack on! Cover that God-given beauty. Sex is bad. Sex dirty. Sex is nasty. Sex should never be thought about. Sex should be shunned.

Yes. This is America. A recently created commercial for Calvin Klein Secret Obsession featuring Eva Mendes has been shunned (yes, shunned!) by American networks because it contains a fleeting glimpse of Mendes’ nipple.

Just think. If America put as much effort into glorifying the wonders of natural human beauty and the natural human behavior known as sex (with proper education) as it did glorifying violence, it’s kind of a forgone conclusion, the country just might be a less uptight, more forgiving and happier…and maybe even less violent…place to live. …

I’m not afraid of nipples. I have two myself, as it happens, and I see them every day in the shower. My dog has quite a few nipples, which are visible every time she rolls over for a belly rub, which is frequently. I see other people’s nipples at the pool several times a week, though those generally belong to men. I suspect this is actually some kind of publicity stunt. If the networks that are supposedly refusing to run this commercial out of nipplephobia, I’d like to think they grossly misjudge their audience, cf. Janet Jackson’s nipple.

But I don’t think being bothered by this commercial means one opposes nudity, beauty or sex. Objectification of women, cooptation of sex for commerce, and crass commodification of the human form are kind of repulsive to me, unlike nipples.

Guess what this beautiful woman is doing? Selling Powerade of course. Hope chafing isn’t a problem. Nipples are apparently okay in print ads, anyway. Does that mean sex is saved?

–Ann Bartow

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on August 06, 2008 (boomark / email).