No
pun intended with the title of this Photo-of-the-Week, although, I'm sure many
will think there is. I'm going to wax philosophic over the topic of, in
particular, breasts, boobs, hooters and a plethora of other terms used for a
natural part of ALL humans' anatomy, plus the human body in general. I'm sure
some of you may be put off by this, however, I can assure you nothing perverse,
lewd or lascivious follows. This will be fairly long and unusual for my
Photo-of-the-Week post, but I'll reveal my motivation for this article near the
end.
Why?
I
took this and several other photos of women exposing their breasts on Bourbon
Street in New Orleans in 2003. The question is WHY do women bare their breasts
in public like this? The next question is, WHY do men go crazy over seeing bare breasts? Is it because they get to see
nipples? Interesting! Every time I take my own shirt off and look in a mirror,
I see . . . guess what? Nipples! I've also seen men who have developed larger
breasts than some women have. Yet, we don't get all crazy when we see bare
breasted men.
Okay,
maybe at my age, old enough to be a certified "dirty old man," I've
seen enough women's breasts that they no longer (I'm going to use the word
again) titillate me to quite the same degree they did when I was in my teens,
20's and 30's with my raging hormones. But, think about it, breasts or, for
that matter, male and female genitalia are as natural parts of every human body
as fingers, toes, the nose on your face and the ears on the side of your head.
We
go to museums and see beautiful paintings and statues of the female and male
body completely exposed. We even take our children there and expose them to,
what we call, ART. Yet, we have turned the same parts of the human body that
are part of this art, into objects of (again, I use the word) titillation,
lewdness and worse. We even have laws against indecency for exposing these
parts of the body in public.
Until
relatively recently, the anatomical names of these body parts weren't even
allowed to be used on television, radio or even movies. Even the press was
loathe to use them in news stories. We called them private parts or private
areas (and still do in many cases). A more recent slang term that's become
somewhat popular, especially when referring to male genitals, is
"junk." Sorry, I ain't got no "junk."
So,
why is this? There are tribes of people around the world, still, who wear
little or no clothing. We even show video documentaries of these indigenous
people in their natural state on television. Nudity is as natural as sleeping
and eating to them. Well, until we and, dare I say, missionaries, indoctrinate
them in their shame. Shame they never knew.
There
are countries, in Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and even Canada, not to
discount Australia and New Zealand, where nudity (not public displays of sexual
activities) is generally legal and/or tolerated. And, yes, there are private
naturist resorts and some public beaches in the U.S. and places like San
Francisco, Oregon and Key West, Florida where public nudity is accepted for
certain situations and events.
Are
There Rewards?
The
women who expose their boobs in New Orleans are typically rewarded with a
strand of cheesy plastic beads. I'm sure they don't put any greater value on
those beads than any other cheap trinket. I believe they do it to express their
own desire for personal freedom, freedom from being told or forced to conform
to someone else's values, standards or definition of moral behavior. The more
beads, the freer they feel.
And,
where did this all start? Could it have been in the Garden of Eden when Adam
and Eve discovered they were naked and ashamed? I won't even approach the topic
of religious oppression and open a MEGA sized can of worms.
Standing
around the woman in the photo above, who, by the way, does not have a super
model body, but she does seem to be enjoying her opportunity of free
expression, are both men and women ogling her. It's as if the guys have never
seen boobs before. I interpret the expressions on some of the women as -
"Geez, I'd like to feel the freedom of doing that," but they are
remembering everything they have been taught and conditioned throughout their
lives about how "good girls" should behave in public.
Follow
The Money!
We
can take another tact on this issue. Is this not about MONEY? Think about it.
How much money does the clothing industry make every year designing and selling
push-up and Wonder bras, see through blouses and dresses, mini skirts so short
they more properly should be considered belts, sexy panties and thongs and
bathing suits.
It
amazes me that women, in particular, are exploited for huge amounts of money
for sexy underwear, but don't want men to see it in public because the men are
seeing too much of their bodies. Yet, the same women will prance around beaches
in bathing suits that often expose more of their skin than the underwear does.
Sometimes the tops barely covers the nipples and the bottoms, well, those have
spawned another industry called "waxing" that's required to remove
hair that would be seen peaking out of the skimpy bathing suits and bikini
bottoms. There is even a name for that - the "bikini line." These
bathing suits and the necessary "grooming" associated with them cost
more than a full skirt or pair of dress slacks for business. And they cover so
little, nothing is left to the imagination anyway. Why even wear them?
A
Slap In The Face
As
an aside, as a young teenage boy, I had
my face slapped one time. The assailant was a particularly cute girl in,
believe it or not, my biology class, because I mentioned the cute birthmark she
had on her inner thigh near her crotch. She wore the shortest mini skirts in
the school of nearly 4,000. She accused me of looking up her skirt. Actually, I
saw the birthmark during the preceding summer when a bunch of us went to the
movies and she was wearing the shortest, tightest short, shorts, again, of any
girl in the school. She didn't try to hide the birthmark then and it was
obvious to everyone. I tried to explain, but got nowhere. Secretly, I think she
was flattered and (here it comes) titillated herself that I (or any guy) would
want to look up her skirt.
GGW
Joe
Francis, an entrepreneur of questionable character, amassed a fortune estimated
at $150 million. He achieved this bounty by photographing and video taping
thousands of young, mostly attractive, women, typically of college age, who
would bare their breasts or drop their pants, or even perform sex acts in
public places. He typically gave them a T shirt as payment and had them sign
model releases. He then produced DVD's and later streaming videos by the
millions and sold them to men.
Joe's
company's name, started in 1997, is GGW, LLC (Girls Gone Wild). He went to
college campuses, Mardi Gras, Spring Breaks, Fantasy Fest and similar events.
The girls exposed their bodies willingly. The market, of course, was men of all
ages.
But,
Joe didn't want to be unfair, so he started another GGW for Guys Gone Wild
using the same business model except he sent our female camera crews and the
market was, you guessed it, women. Joe got himself into a lot of trouble over
the years. He's no longer owner of the company. The company filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy in 2013, but not because there isn't still a huge market for the
product.
I
could go on and on with examples of both female and male strip clubs,
so-called, high-class "Gentlemen's Clubs" where men could bring their
dates (and the dates would actually be treated with respect), as well as, adult
lingerie and "toy" stores and "glamour" photographers. The
list could go on and on.
Idealizing
The Body, Yet Oppressing Free Expression Of The Body
Here's
the thing. As a species we have allowed ourselves to become repressed by
religious doctrine, moral standards dictated by someone else and conditioned
into us and laws enacted by people (unfortunately, often hypocrites) who
determine what is legal behavior and legislate morals. I contend this has done
two things.
First,
it has spawned several huge, multi-billion dollar industries (hooray for free
enterprise and capitalism). Second, it has turned something that is natural and
beautiful into something considered by many to be lewd, dirty, sordid and
tawdry, the nude human body.
We
allow television producers to depict horrific scenes of violence and
disembowelment in high definition. There is even a new category of actor in the
Screen Actor's Guild, "Dead Body." Yes! Actors who play dead bodies.
Meanwhile, it creates news of epic proportions and public outrage when Janet
Jackson's nipple appeared on the TV screen for a fraction of a second during a
Super Bowl full of violent gladiators attempting to rip each other's heads off.
Because of this horrendous event, we now have millions of children who are
scarred for the rest of their lives. Me thinks there may be a problem with the
definition of "public indecency."
The
Wrap Up
Okay,
time to wrap up my philosophical diatribe on the breast and human body. But,
first. allow me to explain my motivation for this article.
I
have posted two other photos of women baring their breasts on Bourbon Street in
past Photos-of-the-Week. They are, to date, two of the three most viewed photos
on my blog, to the tune of thousands of views. They vie only with one other
photo and God only knows why. It's a photo of the barracks I stayed in during
basic training at Lackland Air Force Base. In those other two photos I blurred
out the nipples and left the faces exposed and I'm sure all the viewers were
disappointed. I may go back and reverse the blurring process as I did with this
one.
I
believe we are an unbelievably hung up society. I am as bad as the next person,
male or female. I won't be a hypocrite. Actually, I think, and this is my
opinion based on a very small sampling, that women truly want to be freer.
Since Women's Lib, they have come a long way. Many choose to express their
desire to be less confined by tradition, various forms of conformity and a male
dominated society through opportunities to wear revealing and/or skin tight
clothes or, even public nudity. Perhaps it is actually with the specific intent
to titillate.
I've
talked with any number of women who have said they would love to be able to
walk around topless, as men can, especially at the beach and other social
events. Some are comfortable with total nudity in public and social arenas.
Some said they often wear little or nothing in their own homes because they are
most comfortable that way. I don't believe it's because they want to turn men
on sexually or titillate them in public. It's simply because they feel confined
in clothing.
I
honestly have not questioned men on the same subject. They may have similar
desires and feelings. I'm personally turned off by men's baggy, long swim
trunks. I'm, also, not into the Speedo swim suit (especially at my age). But, I
keep looking for a decent swim suit that allows me freedom of movement.
However, there is nothing like skinny dipping.
Obviously,
clothing definitely serves an important purpose with regard to various kinds of
weather. Certainly, that was a factor in humans creating clothing, after all,
we are "The Naked Ape." Clothing in our current culture also defines
who we think we are, how we want to be accepted, how we are feeling on a
specific day and, certainly, for workplace safety in certain occupations. So,
I'm not dissing clothes for women or men.
I'm simply suggesting that if we weren't as
hung up about the natural aspect of the human body and conditioned to be modest
by some other individuals' standards, beliefs and values systems, perhaps we
wouldn't experience the kind of guilt and exploitation we currently deal with
and my New Orleans photos views wouldn't outnumber my other photos-of-the-week
by magnitude of tens and hundreds.
Who
knows, maybe, if we were all more "comfortable in our (nude) skin in
public, it might even reduce, hopefully, by significant numbers, crimes against
women. But, then again, maybe women actually do use clothes to purposely
titillate men . . . for their own reasons.
I keep forgetting that "Women Are From
Venus and Men Are From Mars." Maybe in the grand scheme of things we're
never supposed to truly understand one another. Meanwhile, I sure don't mind
the Victoria's Secrets commercials and I enjoy Bourbon Street (and similar)
when I can visit them.
I'm sure I'm going to get blasted for this post,
especially, (or possibly) by women readers. But, at this age and since this is
my "living free" blog, I feel completely free to express my thoughts,
opinions and beliefs. I, of course, invite all feedback. Comment away.
