Saturday, February 06, 2010

When does an objection to nudity become a mental disorder?

This pic of myself was removed by facebook.  A woman visited my facebook fanpage, and posted a comment about the photo, she called me 'a perv and insinuated I had no morals or scruples' and 'didn't I know that children were on facebook?'

To give a little background, artist Paul Richmond does a series of paintings called Cheesecake Boys, where male figures are in retro pin up poses getting caught with their pants down.  They are really playful and not erotic.  For his latest collection he is doing 'celebrity' cheesecake boys and has asked famous and semi-famous guys, such as myself, to be his subjects.  That's what prompted me to post this very tame cheesey pic of myself on my facebook fan page yesterday.

As far as facebook goes, yes I know parents allow their children unsupervised roaming on the site, but  I have access to my fan page restricted to 18+ and I do not post images of genitalia or sex acts there.  Now this 'very moral' woman posted a comment on my fanpage, and in order to do that she had to 'become a fan' of mine.  If you are a fan of mine, you must know the kind of art I create: art that celebrates the human male form.  So she lied about being a fan, I guess her 'morals' include lying.

So what about nudity?  I understand that, yes, facebook does not allow nudity in order to adhere to social standards.  Doesn't 'no nudity' therefore mean that you cannot show the anus, the genitalia and in most instances female nipples (I was gonna say breasts, but really the nipples are the only part of the breast that ever get censored)?  My scandalous photo above shows none of those, nor does it show a butt crack, pubic hair, or male nipples. So if none of those things are showing in an image is it in violation of the nudity standard?

This brings me to the woman who lodged the complaint.  She was so offended by this image she felt she had to report it.  I know we all have our hang ups, but please don't project them onto the rest of society.  My photo shows no genitalia, no anus, and there is no implied sexual activity, there is less exposed than you might see on a cherub painted on a church ceiling.  Her mind must be so perverted to be able to take an innocent image and turn it into something so lewd and obscene.  Just the suggestion of nudity sent her into a tizzy.  That is a mental condition known as gymnophobia, fear of nudity.  But what is the most shocking and sad part is that facebook yielded to her complaint and removed the image.  They fed into her fears.  They became an enabler to a woman suffering from an irrational mental condition.

1 comment:

Elisa said...

This is absolutely ridiculous and probably the reason why I don't have a facebook account and why I'm really thinking to deleted my pretty unsed myspace one. I think people who troll that media are on the majority of the cases not "nice". Your photo is nothing if funny and romantic, I really don't understand why someone should complain and above all why facebook had it removed.