For a brief period in the late 80s, when my son was about three, he had a baby doll that he loved to wrap in a dishtowel blanket and carry around. I thought it was wonderful. So, being a hippie and all, I went looking for an anatomically correct baby boy doll. I wanted him to have a baby doll that was built like him and I wanted him not to get the message that penises are bad/dirty/ugly/icky things we don’t acknowledge the existence of… I couldn’t find one. At the time, I was working for an international organization that promoted breastfeeding, and we had dozens of catalogs lying around with realistic baby dolls that were used for medical training, but they were so expensive I couldn’t afford one. So my little boy played with his neutered baby doll for a few months and then that phase was over.
When Vincent’s son was a toddler, when he was in the afterglow of new fatherhood, he created one of the first educational CDs for little kids. It’s a precious discovery learning tool inspired by his love for his baby boy.
But when it was to be released in the US, the publishers had a little problem with the tool. Or, rather, a problem with the little tool; the baby’s itsy bitsy one, to be exact. So they made Vincent draw underwear on his baby boy. Here’s the sad story of Peek-a-boo.
Today I read about a series of children’s books by German author Rotraut Susanne Berner, who has sold nearly half a million copies of the books in this series worldwide. One of them shows children and their parents visiting a museum where they look at, among other things, a statuette of a male nude and a painting of a female nude.
A US publisher, Boyds Mill Press, is interested in publishing the books, but they want her to change her illustrations before they’ll do it. Which she refused to do. The company apologized for asking such a thing, but said that some libraries might not carry the books, and sales could be negatively affected if the illustrations weren’t altered. (It’s all about the sales, not the art, in America.)
Then, of course, there’s the story of the poor comic book store guy who was arrested because of Picasso’s penis…
Clearly the censors missed the blatant masturbation and bestiality in the painting in the illustration above. Plus she has cleavage, which means she has breasts! We can’t have breasts in a children’s book! Wait, the woman on the right has them too! And the woman on the left has an ass! Oh dear GOD! What are we going to do?!! We must save the children!!
Why, in the 21st century, are Americans still so afraid of the human body and human sexuality? Because of the generations of parents who denied the existence of penises and breasts and our bodies’ other delightful, built-in toys. So they grew up all hung up and freaked out and the vicious circle continues.
At a certain point, you just have to pity them. And wonder, of course, how they manage to breed without genitalia.
The respected European Commission put this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koRlFnBlDH0
It just shows that (in general) Europeans are much less uptight about their bodies.
“NippleGate” just made most Europeans laugh with disbelief: there’s more nudity on the average street billboard in Paris or Brussels than in an R-rated US movie :-)
Yes, I find the European attitudes about sex very… refreshing. ;-) Great commercial! Thanks!