You’ve heard the brouhaha about Miss California USA, right? She’s been in the news pretty much ever since the Miss USA contest, where she answered in response to a question about same-sex marriage that it should not be legal. That caused a bit of uproar. The uproar now, though, is because revealing photos of her keep popping up. I saw one this morning on the website TMZ. She’s a comely lass, no doubt about that, regardless of what I think about her political views.
The thing I found interesting is that someone, presumably someone at TMZ, placed stars over her exposed nipples in the photo. Can someone tell me why nipples are so naughty? Not male nipples, those are just boring apparently, and everyone is permitted to see those. But female nipples must be kept hidden. Why?
How are female nipples different? Other than the potential to provide milk, it seems to me there is no difference. They’re not a sex organ, although they certainly can be seen as sexual. But then some people get turned on by feet, or have a thing about necks, or whatever. Presumably, some people find male nipples erotic. So why do we fall all over ourselves to hide the unassuming female nipple?
A few years ago, Janet Jackson’s nipple-slip at the Superbowl set in motion a ridiculous amount of governmental hand-wringing. Big fines were handed out, and a new era of paranoia in broadcasting was born. Many of your “live” TV events are now on delay of a few seconds, so censors will have time to zap someone flipping the bird, dropping the F-bomb, or—horrors—allow their nipple to be seen.
Here is my proposal: For one year’s time, and what the heck, let’s start it on my birthday just for fun (May 25th, if you’d like to get those gift checks in the mail), let’s ban the public viewing of male nipples and allow the public viewing of female nipples. TV, the beach, down by the crick, wherever, girls let ‘em show if you want, guys have to keep ‘em covered. At the end of one year, we’ll then allow men to show theirs, too, and we’ll all just be even-Steven.