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| Song's pretty good, too. |
The perceptions, they are ah-changing. I grew up in a time where drugs where DRUGS, and legalizing them in any shape or form was out of the question. And now look at this shit. Everyone's starting to go "well, shit, that didn't work. Let's try something else."
I applaud this "try something else" approach. I might not always agree with the something elses, but I do appreciate the idea of seeing the way we approach we where taking and going "let's just think about it for a bit."
And I also like women's breasts. So you might be surprised to know Batzarro is 100 percent for serious against the "Free the Nipple" movement, a movement seeking to de-sexualize and legalize female toplessness. Here's my totally non faceticious reasons.
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| Yes, the tit showing was the troubling aspect of this. |
1) It would make us look stupid for spending so many years making a fuss about it.
Back in the mid 80's to mid 90's, the local tv channels apparently didn't need no Free The Nipple Movement, because they would just run American movies(and occasionally, Brazilian soaps) with nudity. For me, growing up, that was normal. When cops walk through a titty bar looking for a suspect, sometimes you'd see some boobage over there. Nothing to it.
Then in 1997 we got Cable TV. The image was super clear and they would run cool movies every 2 days instead of every 6 months. But it stood out to me that there where no breasts. Even in moments where you knew there where supposed to be breasts, there was in their place, black bars, mosaic effects, and other silly things. All the actual breasts where on the scrambled channel, occasionally making themselves visible whenever only my brother was present.
Well, what happens, kids, is that there is an agency overseeing broadcasted images called the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC decides, among other things, what you can say on the radio, what you can show on TV, and how much you can fake-compete in the telecommunications business.
The FCC could, and actually did charge you 1000's of dollars for showing a nipple on the screen. This was...this is the way it is. We've deemed female nipples damaging enough to the youth psyche that we punish those who show them with hefty fines.
One day, on a widely seen football event, what was probably an accident revealed a single areola on beloved singstress Janet Jackson. After that, we decided we needed to show all live shows with a 5 second delay, just to make sure that a nipple never, ever accidentally sneaks its way into our children's eyes.
And isn't that super fuckin' stupid? YES IT IS. Who is stupid? We are stupid. Let's not even get on to the MPAA's treatment of female nudity, and the ESRB's treatment of it.
But suddenly this group comes and declares female toplessness to be a fairly undamaging event, that no one need to worry about. Slowly but surely everyone starts seeing reason, and before you know it a bunch of states become reasonable about it.
But then, it creates a disparity. You can totally walk into Gamestop shirtless to buy games, but those games are still self-regulated to minimize nudity and sexual situations that could upset upsetable types. You're just making all the time we spent putting black bars and reducing nudity super pointless. You're shining a light on decades of our society and saying "you're being ridiculous" and being RIGHT about it. STOP IT!
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| So many have died! |
Sites like Mary Sue are run by prudes that don't even know they're prudes. They talk a big game about the representation of women in pop culture being important, and doing so and so being offensive and troubling, but the truth is they're deeply uncomfortable with most types of sexuality. Since they can't express anything negative about homosexuality, to make up for that they just turn around and start cutting the crust out of anything regarding straight people, to I guess try to get it to a point where no woman could possibly open a comic book and see an image that disagrees with what they like. Or, like, look at a variant cover that's merely one of the existing options for a cover.
And so one day,for progressiveness, of all things, we "loosen up" about fem nips. I bet that the Mary Sues of the world would, at that point, be elated, because this is for progressiveness. They'd love it until the shower scenes start showing up.
You know what I mean. If you think everyone's just gonna treat the newly freed bare breasts strictly under "Mary Sues Guidelines and Expectations Regarding Bared Female Anatomy Ideals" you're shit out of luck. Before you know it, you'll be seeing "artistic" renderings of Supergirl and Wonder Woman's bare breasts. Sure, Supergirl's a minor(or hundreds of years old? Or not-even-human?), but bare breasts are not sexual anymore, so who are you gonna complain to? THE MAYOR?
So what's a site of progressive prudes to do? They want things to be liberalized, but they won't like what people do once they are freed. But it's just as well, since...
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| "Yaaawn" |
You know what Hollywood is scared of? You. For nearly a century, they had a tight grip on who makes what, and how he makes it, when it comes to movies in America. They knew exactly how many studios where too many, and how to deal with those who won't work within their system. They controled the theaters, they controlled retail, and they controlled movies themselves. You either worked with them, or your movie would not get any wide distribution, be shown in any amount of important theaters, and would basically be a failure.
But...then the internet came along, with the strength to carry on. And slowly but surely it's put the promotion and distribution and creation of entertainment ever more out of the hands of Hollywood.
As I mentioned before, FTN's goals would probably create an (even wider) gap between real life and the entertainment industry's standards.
But the Internet would not have the wait. I'm pretty sure a new exploitation genre would dawn upon nipples being freed, and all on the Youtube, which already has a monetization system. I'm pretty sure if there was a free knock off Avengers Age of Ultron, where fake Ultrons where all topless women...I'd watch THAT one at least 5 times!
Hollywood has used "the fear of nudity" to exert control over movies for so long, I think they'd die if they couldn't, and had to actually compete toe to toe with unhindered productions while they pitifully try to decide if "that is PG 13".
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| Gotta save somethin' for the ladies, after all. |
One thing's for sure: Nudity is totally ok when known artists from the 15th century do it. We take old, classic art with the presumption that nobody back then was just a horndog who just wanted to see sexy naked ladies. And it's old, so you know it's edifying. Not like CURRENT art, where you're supposed to take in with the STUPID context of STUPID, current society. Bleh.
So basically, nudity was a niche that we allowed "old classics" to carve for themselves, while coming down on current works for being "exploitative" of nudity. Nudity is the only thing a lot of these old art things have going for it, and basically if they do it it's for real art, and if Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen does it, it's because it's written with a 14 year old's understanding of the world.
But what happens when ANY art can have nudity on it, and thrive? What happens when a music video allows itself to have nudity and still run with the VEVO crowd? I'll tell you what happens: we don't have any real reason to assume hundreds of year old paintings doing nudity are "for the art".
You don't want the old painters to be seen for what they really are, right? Openly exploiting the attractiveness the female body has towards male audiences? You know I'm right.
5) How are we supposed to know which sites are porn and which aren't?
In our current society, there's two kinds of sites: those that show the titties, and those that don't.
Youtube, for example, won't show the titties, officially. Sure, you can find them if you look hard enough, but on the whole, there's no titties. Just like there's no copyrighted content.
Youporn, whoever, does show the titties. For most intents and purposes, Youporn is like a youtube where you can download the videos. And all the videos are porn, I guess.
As you can tell, we can easilly tell which site is a pornographic site and which is just a site where occasionally pornography occurs. You can't go to Youporn and mistake it for anything else. You will see banners filled with tits, and fellatio and ridiculously huge dicks. It's a pretty clear line.
Once you say "nipples are okay", though, the line gets all blurry. Youtube won't be able to just say "this one has tits on it, it's a no-go". They'll have to see the whole thing and decide, video per video, if what is being shown is pornography, and just "art". And you know they'd rather make an automatized nipple detection function and just get it over with.
What if it's two asian coeds making out with no shirt? There's lots of "making out" videos on youtube, such as this:
What if you do the same thing, but with no shirt? Is making out with no shirt more sexual? It SHOULDN'T BE, because bare breasts are not sexual as per the premise. When does it become porn? If they touch them? If they suck them? Penetration? Stupid sax music?
What if it's a video of a grown person drinking the woman's breast milk? Is it porn automatically? When isn't it? It's something that happens. That's how The Grapes of Wrath ended! But what if my version of The Grapes of Wrath switched out the characters for sexy asians?
We're pretty sure we don't want 5 year olds to find out about motorboating through some recommended thumbnail on the Barney video his mother put him on. This would force us to examine our perception of what pornography actually is, and how it affects our children. So why not just leave it as it is, brah. Don't rock the teta boat! Don't...
...Actually, I'm in favor of all those things, and even the actual reasons behind FTN. Go get them!
