I thought the official titty shot of Unfogged was taken in Durham, NC?

For loose definitions of "titty" that may be true.

sein

I'm wondering if the the title is a pun on being happy that B was wrong about soy milk, or whether it is just in Spanish for no reason.

Titties!

[lowers hands]

Hooray!

There are nude pictures of women on the internet?!one!1!?

The world would be a better place if women were free to walk about shirtless on occasion.

Agreed.

I agree that a world where women didn't have good reason to fear violence from men would be a better one.

That's a ghastly sentiment, washerdreyer.

4: One imagines that a Mexican would know that it should be "estoy feliz."

Ogged, I think this is a lovely photo essay you've linked to.

Thanks.

8:They are more free than they think they are, as are we all. No one can make you into an object except yourself. Part of self-objectifying is playing the role of victim, of saying that the gaze demeans or degrades you. It can't, even if it is intended. Part of self-objectification involves objectifying the gazer, assuming you know what he/she thinks and that you both are playing roles.

I know there is a possibility, or a reality, of my tamest playboy pictures or old master portraits being twisty's sexbots. There remains a beauty in the Titian Venus outside the patriarchy. The playmates are no less human than ogged's photos. The photographer did not remove their humanity. Nor are ogged's photos more subjective, they are really just a different objectivity, a different role. The objectivity and the subjetivity both reside in me as I look. It is a photo; it is a person.

I am an old hippie; I have seen plenty of women with their shirts off in non-sexualized contexts. I have even seen women nursing in public places. Obviously , from ogged's photos, the sexualization is not in the nudity.

The playboy models are seeking to be seen as sexual, and it would be degrading, denying their autonomy to see them as sexbots or victims of the patriarchy.

Aw fuck me if I understand this shit. But clothes don't make the sexbot.

Some of those photographs are really great.

http://www.jordanmatter.com/view.asp?url=/exhibits/broadband/nudes_01/047_bleeker_street.jpg&path=/exhibits/broadband/nudes_01

Most of them are more personal and expressive than Spencer Tunick work. But most of them play off the same contrast, disjunction, whatever as his individual portraits, seeing a topless women where is it is not expected. That is simply a role of rebel, a different kind of costume, like wearing a tuxedo to a baseball game.

Is nakedness a costume? I say more about myself with my gimme cap and sockless sneakers, I think.

mcmanus is rocking the pomo in this thread. Wizard cocksucker.

15: Yes! And of them, the narrow depth of field shots are my favorite look. The only shot I found actually disturbing was the one with the woman half on the sidewalk and half in the street. My reaction was the reflexive "Don't play in the street, you're gonna get killed!".

http://www.jordanmatter.com/view.asp?url=/exhibits/broadband/nudes_01/100_soho.jpg&path=/exhibits/broadband/nudes_01

I only saw a few before I left for work, but what I liked didn't have anything to do with the nakedness in public schtick. I liked the fact that we had artsy photos of nude women that didn't achieve artsiness by only having part of the subject in the frame (visually slicing them), having them turn dramatically away from the camera, or using overblown lighting techniques. Also the subjects were all very attractive without being airbrushed or dolled up.

I could probably look at more from work without getting in trouble, but I'd like to accomplish something today.

I think she means "extra pair of arms" in the sense of something big that's always there. She hasn't actually learned to tpye with them, has she?

No one can make you into an object except yourself. Part of self-objectifying is playing the role of victim, of saying that the gaze demeans or degrades you.

Oh please. The only way this could be more false is if you slipped "deconstruction" or "genetic evocation" in there.

No one can make you into an object except yourself.

True, but it requires a Ghandi-esque level of self-actualization to have control over your self-objectification.

It's sort of like saying, "Society didn't make you fat. You're the one that put all that food in your mouth." True....but it massively ignores the complexity of society's relationship to food and the body.

I am to blame for society's crimes. Or vice versa, whatever.

(blows whistle, takes out yellow card) Analogy in 22...

You must be high?! Did you even see the play? Ref, get your head out of your ass. That analogy attacked me.

Head-butt him, heebie-geebie!

Heebie, yesterday I walked past the smoked carp display again, and this time I bought one. Mmmmm. Not as good as smoked salmon, but good.

Soy Zineheebie Zegeebie!

The more I think about it, the more these photos irritate me in their faux celebrate-ordinary-women-beauty.

Here's another analogy, because, fuck the man.

Suppose you had a photo essay of intelligent, accomplished black people who were caught enjoying deferring to white people. "See, intelligent and accomplished! And they're enjoying deferring to white power! Luv it!"

See how that might grate on someone's nerves?

Suppose you had a photo essay of intelligent, accomplished black people who were caught enjoying deferring to white people.

The analogy ban makes much more sense to me now.

Eh, I'm too inarticulate to write without them. Feel free to rephrase my point without using analogies.

The analogy ban would stick if Cala enforced a strict headbutt penalty.

Heebie, why do you hate titties America?

Obviously I'm overcompensating because I'm flat-chested. My extra set of arms are thalidomide limbs.

I actually enjoyed the photo essay; I just think this "no one can exploit you without your consent you can be free in your mind" bullshit best belongs on the refrigerator magnets and cheap bumper stickers, not in actual discourse.

"Eh, I'm too inarticulate to write without them."

The danger of reading the posts from the bottom up is that I thought Heebie was talking about her breasts.

Feel free to rephrase my point without using analogies.

Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that there aren't any analogous situations. This is really an issue, I'd guess, about the pervasiveness of the beauty requirement. If you're walking around, and you overhear some guy you walk by say to another, "Cripes, what a great ass," you might find that funny and even mildly complimentary. But if it happens all the time, whenever you're out walking, it's creepy and demeaning. I can't really think of an analogous situation for some other set of Teh Oppressed. Initially, I'd thought that maybe African-Americans as athletic would be similar, but no one really expects black people to be athletic at everything--walking to the market, having a cup of coffee, etc. The rest of Teh Oppressed are usually just ignored.

Then there's the Skinimax aspect of it: technique and (here) artistry used to mask or at least allow the real purpose: seeing breasts.

heh heh. I almost wrote:

"Yay! I sucked the fun out of the thread!"

But somehow it seemed like I'd be setting myself up.

34:So if I am sexaully aroused by the woman laying in photo linked in 18, the woman laying in the street, the arousal is in the photo or the woman, and Cala must be equally sexually aroused by that same photo or that same woman.

Got it.

36:If there is anything worse than those who would never watch a b/w movie, it is those who think b/w or gritty photography automatically makes itself art. The Arbus aesthetic.

38.1: I realize it's probably a mistake to assume that you adhere to some basic standard of logic and reason, but what?

I was also inspired to feelings of religious devotion by those photos of GWB with the halo, and the John McCain website instantly turned me into a Republonazi.

Cala, don't listen to anything he says. He's an admitted Republonazi.

Ok, to go the other way, that woman olying inthe street obviously doesn't know that I exist, so I am not sure how I can make her feel exploited.

We aren't talking wolfwhistles in the street here, we are looking at fucking photos. I cannot exploit that woman.

...who swings both ways.

I do almost all of my reasoning by analogy, so I'm just going to stick with Heebie's argument as is, and live with the headbutts.

The analogy assumes that female toplessness is like blacks deferring to whites. I don't think that's true. First of all, a lot of these pictures are not focused on the sexual, but are more about bodily pride, like this one. But even with the sexual ones, there is no inherent reason to believe they are oppressive. Unless you believe that all heterosexuality is unredeemably patriarchal, women and men should be able to please each other, even display for each other, without demeaning themselves.

I was saddened to realise that the ladies with the perfect Martha Graham-esque breasts had very possibly had surgery.

Unless you believe that all heterosexuality is unredeemably patriarchal

Ah yes, the dreaded male gaze.

45: One picture is before-and-after surgery.

I don't fully understand why it evoked that feeling in me. I agree that the situations don't really match up, but I still had that grating feeling.

I think it was the unrelenting breast-after-breast length of the photo essay. And the sheer number of unusually pretty women. The photos ugly women seemed well-timed to assuage accusations of look-at-hot-tits.

It just feels like, "We're attracted to smart, capable, individual women! LET'S LOOK AT TWO THOUSAND OF THEIR BOOBIES!"

I'm only attached to the narrow claim that this claim, namely, "if you are exploited, it's your own fault because no one can exploit you without your consent" is bullshit. Not that exploitation isn't a complicated phenomenon; surely it is, given that it involves cultural norms, human response, and society.

But as formulated above, it's just a way to move the responsibility for crass behavior onto the recipient of it, not the agent. It's a nice way to excuse bullies. That's what I took 14 to be saying, and I still think it's wrong. Oddly, that doesn't in any way entail that people could have different reactions to the same photograph.

"could" s/b "couldn't"

47.--Yes, that's the one that made me realise that those other lovely ones probably should not be taken at face value. As it were.

Cala, these are two different discussions right? I think the "no one exploits you without your consent" is victim blaming bullshit, too. But that is a different issue than whether these photos are sexist/exploitive.

49:Cala, that is not what I said in 14. Of course exploitation can exist.

What I said was more along the lines of "If you feel exploited in ambiguous situations",,,etc

What was in the thread below? Christina Ricci said she was neither exploited in the movie nor felt exploited, and most of the threads here, and at the feminist blogs, said that Christina Ricci was just wrong about her feelings and her assessment of the situation.

Absolutely; 14 just pissed me off.

I'm not sure about the photos. I'm inclined to say that they're not exploitive, because they don't seem to be demeaning the women, or fixated on portraying the boobs as erotic, or on one specific body type. Plus, my reaction was mostly of the 'oh, so that's what lots of normal boobs that aren't mine look like' variety.

But heebie makes a good point on how neutral something like this can be. Smart, intelligent, titties! [hooray!]

Y'all can post as many titty links as you want, and you're not even going to begin to catch up.

Be sure and click on the chart. Think I should change my name to "butchphd"?

48: For some reason I am much more sympathetic to a statement like "Your boobie fixation is really tiresome" than "your boobie fixation is exploitive." The latter statement may merely be trying to explain the reason for the former, but it seems to strong a reason. I would much rather simply accept that I am being tiresome, and try to keep my boobie fixation to myself.

Something about mcmanus's #53 makes me more sympathetic to (what I infer is) his point. There is something odd about describing as exploitative an interaction in which neither the "exploiter" or the "exploited" feel is accurately described as exploitative. That's not to say it's wrong to so describe it (though I admit I'm not crazy about that framework as a general rule). But it is odd.

Oh it is tiresome. twisty (or someone like her, if I am mistating etc) says the patriarchy is in the blowjob and pushup bra, and her readers say the patriarchy exists or does not exist in one or both of the participants, or in the observer or observed or both.

There can maybe be useful racial analogies. Should blacks take jobs as waiters or bellhops or chauffeurs? Are those jobs intrinsically demeaning, or just demeaning to blacks? If a white customer treats a black chauffeur in a degrading manner, does the game have to shift to confrontation in order that the black not be actually degraded?

There was a period in the early seveties when I would simply look at a strange woman, and get a smile snd the finger in response. Not always, but often enough I remember it as a fashion.

Think I should change my name to "butchphd"?

Won't help you move up the list any. For that, you need to go with CocksuckerPhD.

57: I tihnk there's something in the neighborhood of that that's right, but I think all that means is that there's degrees of exploitation. Christina Ricci's movies don't exist in a cultural vacuum, and neither do these pictures. In other words, I'm not sure exploitation maps onto just the feelings of the alleged exploiter and exploitee.

But I am also interested in ogged's photos, and the Spencer Tunick project , in themselves. Tunick can only desexualize his subjects in a context in which nudity is sexualized. He could get nothing useful in a nudist colony, his aesthetic failed.

The captions for ogged's photos, and I have looked at most of them, add a layer of complexity to what is going on. The breast-feeding woman told the photographer to stop, saying :"I don't need to show a nipple to feel like a woman."

I don't need to show a nipple to feel like a woman.

I do.

Tunick is very interesting to me. The first HBO documentary is better. When Tunick went to Europe, he had more difficulty getting good pictures, which was a message in itself. His group photos are a I think a different point than his individual portraits.

Tunick needs amateurs, people unused to taking their cloths off in public places, and somewhat uncomfortable in doing so, people not relaxed before a camera. Never models or nudists. He prefers various kinds of "normal" or unmodelish body shapes. Older people, for instance. He would never take a photograph in a cliched of conventional setting, the beach or a field of wildflowers or a soft interior. His models "pose" in a "anti-pose", usually with an attempt to repress expression and individual personality, other than what is communicated by the body.

Hey, I know a couple of women who posed in the foreground of one of Tunick's photos. Neither of them are exactly what I'd call shy, but no, they're not models or nudists. It sounds like they had a really good time at the shoot: text message with the early AM rendezvous point, the "quick quick" disrobing and posing, the fear of cops and tourists... One of these women was a roommate for a while, and her copy of the print was on the refrigerator (each poser gets a print). I had seen his work a couple of time before then, and liked it, but now I'm totally biased.

61, I think that was a different woman at the park, not the subject of the photograph.

Christina Ricci's movies don't exist in a cultural vacuum, and neither do these pictures. In other words, I'm not sure exploitation maps onto just the feelings of the alleged exploiter and exploitee.

I'm not sure that the two participants are the only relevant parties, either. In some ways, these issues are reminiscent of the cluster of issues surrounding overseas sweatshop work.

Spencer Tunick is just absolute shit.

67: Is that "bad" meaning bad, or "bad" meaning good?

Spencer Tunick is just absolute shit.

I've seen some single subject photos of his that I thought were quite good.

Ya know what's funny? Ever since I saw this, whenever I think of nude representations and often when I am looking at nudes, this self-portrait comes to mind.

Alice Neel

Lucien Freud is growing on me to where I think his work has a beauty, but Egon Schiele is still scary.

36: I can't really think of an analogous situation for some other set of Teh Oppressed.

Exoticism would be the analogy for visible minorities. Sometimes sexualized, sometimes just weird and clueless.

I never got my Spencer Tunick print. Anyone know how? I balked at the time because my sister was in the photograph.

67:Could be. From what I have seen in his documentaries, I haven't seen what I think is a likeable person. He is not a great charmer, and part of what is funny is how much difficulty he has in getting models.

Yeah, he could be wicked or an asshole, trying to justify objectification through the backdoor, to surreptitiously depersonalize what is most personal.

I am a bit of a shit myself.

Oh, hell. I shouldn't say things like that on a public forum; I don't care for his work and am consistently surprised that he's achieved the celebrity he has. I don't think I've ever seen any photographs of his I've appreciated, but I haven't sought them out in a long time. Definitely nothing personal.

The thing that bothered me in the titty photos had mostly to do with Hollywood, and these models and actresses' descriptions of their interactions with agents. A lot of those women were told by agents that they needed to lose 4 inches around the wait to get a job. Four inches! If it weren't for Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica, I might do something with these feelings of complicity and stop watching film made here altogether. But those are very fine shows.

That's why you go by Armsmasher.

Reading my Dallas Morning News review of Black Snake Moan as I write. Big-type front page of the Guide section wih a huge chain graphic, but I think the shortest review I have ever read in the News. :) Chris Vognar says:"But it is still mighty strange." quotes the director about intent, but apparently doesn't feel safe or comfortable saying much about the movie.

I am always a year behind, since I get my money's worth out of my cable bill, so saw V for Vendetta for the first time last night. Mighty fine movie. OT maybe because of Portman's appearance in the various portions of the movie.

I can't decide what to think. On the one hand, there is a subtext here of "Yay titties!" which is, as heebie-geebie said, just grating.

OTOH, I don't think the naked body should be an object just for being a naked body, and maybe some work like this (as opposed to the photographs that blur out or entirely cut out the woman's head, which definitely does serve to make her into an object), which seems to have at least some respect for these women as people, can help reform people's ideas about the nude body, and at least sexualize them a little less.

I find that going through the album, I'm both fascinated and repulsed -- because I can't help but see some objectification there, but because it is still both good art and respectful work, I am interested in the issues it brings up.

Basically, can you use the patriarchy (naked titties!) to subvert the patriarchy (desexualize the bare breasts)? Which is a question I would guess has been addressed in many different places by many different people, but I'm a simple young'n who has just begun explorations into these topics, so what the heck do I know.

77: I can't help but see some objectification there

The problem usually comes in with the automatic designation of "objectification" as a negative. Pretty much anything that involves naked bodies is going to involve objectification at some level; what's interesting is not just that it happens, but what the context is.

In retrospect, V for Vendetta was a piece of pointless shit. Torture will set you free!

80: It's a good adaptation but I always did find that aspect of the story weird (the torture subplot is one of the parts of the movie that's faithful to the book). There's something of a "torture can do good in the right hands" mentality going on there, which is fucked up.

70: a lot of Schiele is just creepy, but I do love this one: http://www.leopoldmuseumshop.com/024/KunstkartenDruckePoster?pid=322&eng=x ... not that it's not creepy.

80, 81: what I thought was good and interesting about the book was that it highlighted the moral ambiguity of the revolutionary: part of the evil of tyranny is that resisting it typically takes immoral forms, breaking eggs, etc. "Anarchy" in the book wasn't the pretty spectacle it was in the movie. Still, fun.

78: Audre Lorde said no.

The photos are well-done, but I think my discomfort with this boils down to the fact that we rarely if ever see this kind of project with naked men.

The photos are well-done, but I think my discomfort with this boils down to the fact that we rarely if ever see this kind of project with naked men.

Is that true? Or, maybe, the issue is one of how you define the project. I thought there were lots of male photographers that focused on the male and nude male form. Is Bruce Webber someone like that (I know nothing about Art or art)?

rarely if ever see this kind of project with naked men

O RLY?

"rarely if ever see this kind of project with naked men"

You have seen naked men, right??!/?

Lying around the city? No, I haven't.

Labs will point you to the parts of the city where you can see naked men.

Hey...were these photos taken in a place in France?

Well, titty fascinations *are* tiresome. And since the "exploitative" thing is also tiresome, and more and more I think it's not the point, here's what I think is:

I dunno about the other women on this site, but you know what? This kind of thing honestly makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm perfectly okay with joking about tits, sending pictures of mine to people I like, whatever. But there's something about the framing of a photograph, or the presentation of a whole series of tit pictures, or the fact that the models are *only* topless for the most part and not actually nude, or--and I think this is a huge part of it--that their supposed "desexualization" is bullshit--that bothers me. Honestly, most of those pics *are* "sexy" in an arty kind of way: the women are conventionally attractive, the poses are unnatural and draw attention to the "bare boobies!" thing (how many arched backs are in there? Jeez), there's something else that I can't quite put my finger on. But yeah. It makes me feel kinda naked myself, and like I'm being assessed, or stared at, or that at least there's the *potential* for that.

I know what it is. The pics make me feel like what I'm seeing is imaginary: that here are women going about their lives and people (me) are looking at them and imagining them topless. Not even naked, but topless. It's extremely uncomfortable-making.

Maybe that makes me a prude (doubtful), maybe it makes me a feminazi (doubtful), maybe it makes me humorless. I've certainly seen pictures of nude women that don't make me feel that way, and I'm capable of shifting my brain into a gear where I can look "objectively" or "artistically" or whatever at pics like this and pretend that I don't have that immediate gut-punch, hunch over and guard my center feeling about them. But I do. It bugs me, and it makes me feel anxious and uncomfortable, and if I let it, it would make me feel angry. Instead I'm going to just throw this comment out and then let it go.

Also, I love Heebie's analogy, and Bob's talking out his ass.

87: Just stop averting your eyes and you will see them.

"The pics make me feel like what I'm seeing is imaginary: that here are women going about their lives and people (me) are looking at them and imagining them topless"

I have to agree with BPhd. After looking at the website for a couple of hours, I agree that it is an exhibit of the fantasy of seeing the bare breasts of the ordinary women around you. I am not sure that I would necessarily call that promoting the degrading of women, but it certainly seems to fall into square into the thought of wondering what you co-workers breasts look like. Not that I would ever do that....

Good grief.

If I worked my way through the entire 2000 (or whatever) photos, I suppose I'd get pretty tired of looking at women's breasts, since that is the unifying theme, after all.

Having randomly clicked on just half a dozen photos last night, what I got was: women freed from the goddamned harnesses (aka bras) and not concerned over being ogled in an exploitative manner.

That some of you felt the need to see those photos in terms of exploitation speaks volumes about precisely what I took the photos to be exploring: women's feelings about their own breasts. The fact that breasts are deeply sexualized in this society, while in reality, most of the time, they're just there, much as your belly-button is, as you go about your business.

Why? Why turn an exploration of this obnoxious issue into a repudiation of the photo essay?

Duh. I describe the issue as "obnoxious" because, like bob mcmanus, I'm enough of a hippie that I've seen plenty of women going about shirtless, and in that society, it's just not an issue. Guys might get giggly and smile at times, but mainly it's not an issue.

women's feelings about their own breasts

Oh please. This essay is exploring how men want to believe women feel about their breasts. Mine are smushed up ugily inside my bra right now, that's how I feel about them.

I've had them since I was thirteen. How do you feel about your testicles?

This is girls gone wild for the NPR set.

Reflecting on Parsimon's comment, I have spent some time in Europe and around Grateful Dead types, and I tend to agree that it seems to be a healthier attitude to have more breasts exposed. The giggly, naughtiness factor of seeing a bare breast is diminished.

Perhaps this is why people tend to freak when they see women breastfeeding.

The photos mostly remind me of sneaking around cities to take gonzo nudie photos with my female friends.

it certainly seems to fall into square into the thought of wondering what you co-workers breasts look like

Yeah. Funny thing is I'm perfectly okay with people *talking* about that as long as they're not being frattish and jerky about it. And I don't mind that people do it. I think I just mind being dragged into playing the game when I don't want to.

93: Hefner really needs to do "Girls of NPR."

A few points. 1) Even if this were just "Titties! Hooray!" I'd be ok with that. 2) I think the pictures do a very good job of showing this to be true; that clothes distort and narrow the range of bodies we find beautiful or "worth looking at." 3) They also do a good job--and I think the sheer number helps here--of showing how a naked breast can exist in the world without distorting everything around it--in other words, of saying "calm the fuck down." Of course, there's also distruption, but that's inevitable at this point....

All that aside, the main thing is whether they're good photographs, and I think a lot of them are.

Yeah, and if you photographed a Grateful Dead concert, or a beach in Spain, and showed me your photographs, and all it was was a bunch of titty shots, I'd be irritated.

Jackmormon:
If I happen to click over to your website, it is definitely not to see those pictures. By the way, what part of your site should I avoid so as to not see those pictures.

99: What is an acceptable percentage? 75%?

93: I like mine (and I don't dislike bras). I feel fine about them. I don't like it when people stare at them unless I've developed a very trusting relationship with that person, or if I'm playing the role of ass-kicking fuck-you bitch, in which case I'll stare rudely back. The photos are clearly asking you to stare.

Oh, I did breastfeed in public--by pulling my tit out of the top of my shirt. That didn't bother me. And I don't mind seeing people nude, either.

Maybe that makes me a prude (doubtful), maybe it makes me a feminazi (doubtful), maybe it makes me humorless (scientifically demonstrable) .

Sorry. Pendulant drupelets.

Will, I've hidden the nudie pictures in my archives as an easter egg. You've got to read and click on everything to find them.

How do you feel about your testicles?

Very happy that I can let them swing free in boxers, which actually seems somewhat relevant.

"This is girls gone wild for the NPR set."

Precisely my feelings. Not that there is anything wrong...

98.2: Mmmmmmaybe. I've seen plenty of pics that do that in ways that don't give me the same discomfort I have with these. Again, I think it really is partly the toplessness, which kind of demands "stare at the tits." If the women were all fully nude, maybe that would be different.

Also, you know, maybe if some of the pics were about the variation in men's bodies? (And yes, I know that there's one pic with a topless guy. Maybe more, I haven't looked at many.)

Well, titty fascinations *are* tiresome.

But titties are endlessly fascinating.

Sorry, but they are.

There's something plenty wrong with "Girls Gone Wild," since it's basically built around getting chicks drunk and taking advantage of them. If that's not how these photos were done (I haven't seen them), the comparison is wildly inapt.

103: Hey, now, Cala. I seem to remember you were pretty humorless about Hirshman. And I know you don't want me to start making wedding jokes.

98, 106, whoever.

Sorry I have a BIG OLD chip on my shoulder about this. One of the things I had to work through in my twenties was realizing I'd grown up with the internalized belief that women were inferior to men. I didn't see any problem with evaluating women on their looks. I preferred male teachers to female teachers. Etc. Low-grade perpetual depression.

Long boring story: with work, all better now.

Because of this, I tend to see this stuff as very fucking high stakes indeed. When girls internalize this gaze bullshit, it makes their life much worse until they work it out for themselves.

108: Why be sorry? That's fine. But surely you can see the distinction between liking them and how one might feel being the owner of a body part that people are fascinated with and (sometimes) ogle right in front of you.

Staring is rude, and it reads as a threat. We all know this, right? So having one's boobs stared at feels threatening. I don't even think you need to get into feminism to recognize that.

But what does that have to do with these pictures, heebie?

The appeal of Girls Gone Wild is that it's the hot girl from your biology class, all drunk and uninhibited. She's got the wild abandon of your fantasies.

Same thing with these women, just the NPR set has a really boring idea of wild abandon.

94: Perhaps? That's the whole of it. Breasts are sexualized, and so people entrenched in that view of the world are skeeved when they see babies sucking on them.

Being "free" from bras: try a pain processing disorder sometime. I wear a bra at all times, except for showering. Even sleeping I only wear garments with a shelf bra -- the sliding fabric is painful otherwise. Thinking of walking around topless just makes me fold my arms and wince. Just something brushing up against the side would be painful. Bleh.

but it certainly seems to fall into square into the thought of wondering what you co-workers breasts look like.

B and Will are absolutely right about this. Now I realize why I was so very drawn into the gallery. And now I feel a little shallow for it.

OTOH, there is an exhibit of photos of wounded Iraq war vets up in the student center. Maybe if I go look at that I'll feel better.

Staring is rude, and it reads as a threat. We all know this, right? So having one's boobs stared at feels threatening. I don't even think you need to get into feminism to recognize that.

Pictures of breasts encourage breast-staring behavior? Is that the argument?

93:

How do you feel about your testicles?

If I had some, I think I'd probably wish I could let them flap in the breeze more often. I understand men enjoy this.

No, MORE: I have witnessed men enjoying this. It just kinda makes you smile.

Why does it make a difference that Heebie apparently thought I was a man in making her response in 93? Sort of a rhetorical question, however.

113 -

I don't know, but I know I'm having an emotional angry response instead of a thoughtful, logical response. So my guess is that it's triggering those residual issues.

I get the appeal of being the woman in the photo. You get lots of positive attention. You get to be ogled. Being ogled is fun. And I know what my internal life was like, when being ogled was important to me.

Then I get angry and cloud over.

109:"There's something plenty wrong with "Girls Gone Wild"

The comparison I saw with "Girls Gone Wild" was that of women repelling against the patriarchy using the language and context of the patriarchy, as amanda said in 78. It is a self-concious sexualized exposure.

And as said above by the other hippie, I have seen plenty of women just undress to wash up or get sun or other mundane reasons. That does not describe ogged's photos.

Same thing with these women, just the NPR set has a really boring idea of wild abandon.

We all just fantasize about being able to hail cabs as easily as that one very tall, thin, evenly tan, topless woman. Is that so wrong?

Rob helpy-chalk: So sexualizing vets makes you feel better? Sick freak!

There is still some value to people seeing many naked breasts of varying sizes and shapes. When the poor children google "boobs" or "titties," they need to know that ANS isnt the only shape. Do it for the children.

117: No, the argument is that looking at the pictures involves staring at breasts.

You know what it is? It's that the women here are mostly averting their eyes. In (say) the pic with the woman and man coming up the escalator, she's looking at the camera and smiling, and I feel *much* more comfortable. The breastfeeding woman isn't looking at the camera, but she seems relaxed.

And most of the feminist here's-a-naked-woman-this-is-what-we-really-look-like types of pictures I can think of, the models are either looking straight at the camera or there's an element of "portrait of a woman relaxing" in some of them, where she's not. But the women in these pics don't look relaxed (which makes sense, given the hurried conditions in which the pictures were taken). I think it's their discomfort and not looking at the camera that just screams at me that something's wrong.

First of all, Q:How do you feel about your testicles?
A: Clearly, differently than you feel about your breasts. Although, sometimes the squished problem does apply.

I find Bitch's comments in 90 interesting; I had sort of the opposite reaction. When I first saw the post, I rolled my eyes and felt a little annoyed - I, too, get tired of hearing straight guys go on about titties. But looking at the pictures was really interesting. I don't actually get to see that many titties, and so looking at a whole bunch in a non-sexualized context (and I get the point about the arched-back stuff, but at least non-overtly-sexualized) was nice in a ain't-human-variety-wonderful kind of way. I came away from it feeling all girlfriendy and wanting to hang out with my lesbian pals.

However, I realize I may not constitute a representative case.

116:The Alice Neel self-portrait at 70 does wonders for me.

110: Touche. If there will be the making of the wedding jokes, I should be the one to do it.

Also, I really like the GGW for the NPR set, even though I think it's not quite right.

I would like to see a website full of tasteful pictures of men without pants. Shirttails, socks, shoes, hats, DANGLY BITS, briefcases, jackets...

Tasteful, though.

There's another photographer, I think he's in the Bay Area, who's made a reputation taking feministy real-woman nudes, including elderly and mastectomy-scarred women. Some of those are striking.

128: A friend of mine once suggested doing a calender.

118 - huh, yeah, I did think you were male. I assumed you were seconding Bob McManus's position. Sorry about that.

How do you feel about my testicles, then?

117: No, the argument is that *these* pictures do that somehow, and I think I've explained why in 124. At least, I have to go get PK, so that will have to be my last word. I feel like it's a good reading. I'm not saying it's the only possible reading, but it's mine, and I think it's as legitimate as any other.

The appeal of Girls Gone Wild is that it's the hot girl from your biology class, all drunk and uninhibited. . .

You can go to most any campus bar for "hot, drunk and uninhibited." I think the basic appeal is that it's a vicarious dose of skeevy, leering frathouse date-rape culture for those who can't or won't indulge IRL. If the "fantasizing about what's under a co-worker's clothes" dynamic is being accurately described, I'd say that's not comparable.

I came to the conclusion, a little while after browsing through the photos, that the reason they don't really irk me is that they seem to turn the women in them into subjects, not objects. Which is certainly better than the way most artists (this includes anything from canvas and paint to marketing) approach women's bodies.

As far as the fact that there isn't an analogous set of photos for men: there isn't really a part of the male body that's so hypersexualized it might as well be a dick. Whereas tits are so hypersexualized in our society that they might's'well be cunts. Flashing a nipple is like flashing your clit.

So there really is no way to address this same issue, but for men. Because men don't have this issue: a body part that isn't explicitly sexual being treated like it is.

But at the same time, the very fact that there isn't such an issue for men pretty much proves why this whole set of photos is disturbing at base.

128: I don't think I'd be able to stop laughing.

There's a Japanese photographer who has done series of elderly nudes, but I've forgotten his name.

128: I'll repeat: you have seen naked men, right??

The photoessay makes me think of the secretary from Arrested Development.

Flashing a nipple is like flashing your clit.

A little short of that, surely?

I think the photographer is either explicitly allied with or has been co-opted by the "topfree" movement.

Is that true? Or, maybe, the issue is one of how you define the project. I thought there were lots of male photographers that focused on the male and nude male form. Is Bruce Webber someone like that (I know nothing about Art or art)?

By "this type of project" I meant more along the lines of Heebie's 93. Sure, there have been photographers who used male nudes as subject matter. But there's something kind of come-upstairs-and-see-my-etchings about a male (presumably straight) photographer having women take off their tops in the name of learning lessons about their own bodies.

I didn't find it disturbing mostly because a) the breasts weren't generally fake or airbrushed b) while everyone looked nice, there wasn't a whole lot of arching (there's a topless snow angel-maker) or erotic posing. And most of them also had normal makeup and hairstyles, like, oops, just forgot to put my shirt on today, silly me.

But I also think it would be a bit much to hail it as a blow for equality.

The thing that bothers me about these pictures is the realization that I will almost certainly never see this many naked breasts in real life.

144 - huh? So go somewhere where you would. Stare at the sacks till you're desensitized.

But there's something kind of come-upstairs-and-see-my-etchings about a male (presumably straight) photographer having women take off their tops in the name of learning lessons about their own bodies.

That's because there's something kind of come-upstairs about straight males.

I like that the topfree board has several dudes on it. Kind of like that Concerned Women for America dude who was its president.

That's not really what I meant.

I would like to see a website full of tasteful pictures of men without pants. Shirttails, socks, shoes, hats, DANGLY BITS, briefcases, jackets...

Whatever happened to all the pictures that were emailed to c0ck-at-unfogged-dot-com?

148 - I felt like a snappy jerk as soon as I pressed post. Sorry about that. I know that's not what you meant.

Whereas tits are so hypersexualized in our society that they might's'well be cunts. Flashing a nipple is like flashing your clit.

Wait, what?

150: Don't worry about it.

138.---Of course I've seen naked men. I like naked men!

One thing that I didn't especially like about the whole project is that it seemed to be lost at some dialectical level of self-reference, the double-reverse half-twist thing where you say, "No, I am not objectifying breasts, I am reframing the objectification of breasts to show.... something something bla bla bla". We've sort of ended up going around in circles by now, with the series being:

1. Cover up, nudity is shameful, be chaste.
2. The human body is beautiful, especially the young slender busty female body, be liberated
3. Sexual liberation came in a male-dominant form and pornography is exploitative.
3a. Nudes aren't sexual, just pure visual forms like Whistler's mother (who wasn't a "mom"). Used as a defense in porno trials.
4. We've gone beyond 1, 2, and 3 to something else (irony, strangement, etc.)
5. We've gone beyond #4....... etc., up to n.

In other words, various little tweaks of 1, 2, and 3 are presented as revolutionary and new and pathbreaking, but actually there aren't any new positions but just 1, 2, or 3 plus irony or making-strange or reframing or whatever.

So my feeling is, photographers should photograph pelicans or trees or swamp plants or bacteria or whatever. The nude has been done.

This really only responds to the artistic claims of the project. As to whether it's exploitive, my guess is that the cute breasts get a lot more interest than the others, as though guys reedit the group on Playboy standards.

Whatever. The Alice Neel in 70 is useful, she is confronting the viewer with her nudity and her subjectivity. It is hard to see Alice as an object in that painting. I was wondering if I would have a different reaction in the artist/model of 70 had been young and conventionally attractive, and I am not sure, do to the pose & eye-contact, that it would be that different, there wiould still be a dialogue with her subjectivity. IIRC, Morisot and Cassatt rarely did the eye-contact self-portraits that Rembrandt and Gauguin did, although Romantic Madame Vigge Le Brun did many.

Then I have to wonder if a male artist had done the Alice Neel portrait, or the hypothetical young-woman in the Alice Neel pose, why my reaction as a viewer should be different, that the subjectivity would be lost. What if I didn't know?

if I would have a different reaction in the artist/model of 70 had been young and conventionally attractive,

To me, this make 1000% difference. I'm sort of stunned that it's debatable for you.

154:"As to whether it's exploitive, my guess is that the cute breasts get a lot more interest than the others, as though guys reedit the group on Playboy standards."

One of the ones I remember most clearly i the mastectomy with the big blue star. It was a couple holding hands. I remember the breast-feeder was on one side of the park-bench, with a half dozen people sitting with their backs to her looking at a body of water. I remember the girl high up on the statue, the construction worker, the woman in front of something like a rock concert crowd.

I seem to remember the contexts and backgrounds more than the women and breasts.

156 probably isn't meaning to imply that young, conventionally attractive women can inherently not be construed as subjects, so... maybe some clarification on what the "1000% difference" is there?

But there's something kind of come-upstairs-and-see-my-etchings about a male (presumably straight) photographer having women take off their tops in the name of learning lessons about their own bodies.

Not the women learning lessons about their own bodies.

The viewer of the photographs thinking about women's bodies. Male and female viewers will have differing thoughts.

The photos desexualize breasts, or put them in context.

156:Look at the pose and expression in the Alice Neel portrait comment 70. A young, attractive women would still challenge and confront me. I think.

Hi. Free titty photos to someone who can help me with a bleg (I shall now only show up here when I'm drunk or need something.) In Word, if I want to write supra note blank, what is it I do so that if I change the original note, the supra will change too?

Thanks!

This may be a feature of screwed up law firm networks, but my experience of anything automatically updating like that in Word is that it (a) won't work accurately, and (b) will make your document explode.

Never mind, I figured it out. No titties for you; I'm an independent woman!

IIRC it's Cross-Reference in the Insert menu.

162: I used to do it in native Word when I was in my little firm. I remember as being a PITA but workable. Haven't done it in a while, though.

156, 158, 160: What's interesting about the Neel self-portrait is that paintings of sexually unattractive female bodies are so rare. Neel's self-representation is in defiance of the conventional expectation that the unattractive older woman will prefer to remain invisible, thus conveniently sparing the spectator the traumatic experience of seeing her.
A younger, "conventionally attractive" (a phrase I'm starting to think is kind of mush-mouthed and annoying) woman is not going to be able to make the same point very easily. It's not that she cannot be inherently construed as a subject, it's that she probably won't be.

I wonder if this explains some of the extremes Cindy Sherman has gone to in her work.

Here's a Lucien Freud painting of a younger, more "conventionally attractive" woman. Pretend it's a self portrait. Even though the realism is clinical, even though her expression is not seductive, does it do the same thing Neel's painting does? I don't think so.

Though the main effect of Lucien Freud's work on me is to make me want never to take my clothes off in front of another person again.

48: The photos ugly women seemed well-timed to assuage accusations of look-at-hot-tits.

Which women count as "ugly" to you? The heavy ones? The post-mastectomy one? The AAA cup ones? The old ones?

You might to examine why you find these women to be "ugly" as opposed to, say, "not conventionally attractive". [And read "conventionally" as "skewed by hetero-male-dominated cultural norms in US society".] Is this perhaps a residue of your former feeling of men=superior/women=inferior, hence any women who do not meet some Playboy-driven model of female attractiveness=more inferior=ugly?

As for the ratio of pretty/"ugly": I suspect it's far more difficult for any photographer taking pictures in public to find women who are not "conventionally attractive" who are willing to remove their clothes. The pretty ones know that they meet certain imposed standards of beauty; the plain ones, the flat-chested ones, the older ones, the fat ones, all are told daily how they don't match up, how they have failed to meet the criteria that make them acceptable. It's probably a bit more daunting for the women that men don't see to doff their shirts and demand to be seen.

Lucien Freud paintings don't do anything exactly because they're clinical. It's sad. One wants to take the painter aside and ask: What are you doing? It is frankly, painful.

84: Bruce Webber is softcore porn. Arty, tasteful, dee-licio... uh... anyway, it's not the same kind of project for sure.

151: Precisely my reaction.

You might to examine why you find these women to be "ugly" as opposed to, say, "not conventionally attractive". Because she's not addicted to euphemism? Anyone who is told she is not "conventionally attractive" knows that what she's being told is that she's ugly.

171: hey, I don't know about that. I've been pretty attracted to some people who weren't conventionally attractive.

170: I guess I think of the linked photos as soft-core porn. This thread repeats the various porn wars in milder fashion. But, you know, we already had the porn wars, and porn won. Is the disagreement here really about how to classify the linked photo set?

I don't think it's just a euphemism, though. We do have a conception of "conventionally attractive" as the sort of thin, slightly busty, young women with decently (but not too!) muscular legs and arms, flat stomachs, etc. that I think we can identify as a "type" of look. I would say about myself that I'm not conventionally attractive, but never that I'm ugly. In fact, I think I'm pretty hot, and that the convention is stupid. But it's not just euphemism.

166: Note the reclining pose in the Freud and the lack of eye-contact.

Alice Neel ...this is the artchive, has an article and a small collection, and a lot of pop-ups

Margaret Evans Pregant...(click for larger image) reiforces the idea that Neel was making a statement about body images ....but, for instance, and you can check the others

Linda Nochlin and Daisy

...shows Neel's pattern of large canvas filling portraits very often with disturbing, confrontational eye contact. Neel generally is demanding a different more personal engagement from the viewer than Freud. I would contend the nudity in the self-portait is less important that the pose and the eye contact/expression.

Although Freud did do self-portraits.

Anyone who is told she is not "conventionally attractive" knows that what she's being told is that she's ugly.

That is often how it's used, but a friend and I refer to some people as "ugly but beautiful," which just means not conventionally attractive, but attractive nonetheless.

166: One obviously couldn't make the same point with a different body, but to assume that means the younger woman "probably" wouldn't be construed as a subject seems to beg the question.

171: Anyone who is told she is not "conventionally attractive" knows that what she's being told is that she's ugly.

I think this is just wrong. I mean, there are jerks and jerkettes who would use that as code for "ugly," obviously, but it's not a standard convention.

171: Like Pauley Perrette? IMO not conventionally attractive but definitely not ugly.

http://imdb.com/name/nm0005306/

178: You weren't around for the last bunch of threads where people (that would be me) became enraged about this, but whoever the hell that is, of course she's conventionally attractive. She's slim with big tits, and she looks kinda like Drew Barrymore. If you need to draw attention to deviations between someone who looks like that and 'conventionally attractive', you don't run into a lot of conventionally attractive women in everyday life. (It is possible that what you meant was "I don't care for her style of makeup", but 'not conventionally attractive is a hell of a way of saying that.)

128: Actually, Cammie Toloui worked at the Lusty Lady (unionized titty club), and took photos of the customers in pretty much that situation. I can't remember the name of the book, but they really are some good photos. A *lot* of the men are holding their hands up to block their faces from the camera. I really like the series.

And it's is funny, and the two Neels are an example. I have been looking at copies of the Neel self-portrait for years, and it isn't the "ugly body" I see anymore, it is the face. Just as in pregnant Margaret, first seen today, I can't seem to look away from the eyes.

In fact, I no longer think of the old woman in the chair as ugly. It is Alice Neel:"Here I am."

I think it is the paranoia. IRL people say I study faces too intently and make them uncomfortable.

179: I'm defining C.A. as any of the interchangeable types I can never remember the name of when I see them on TV. Slim blondes with big tits are a dime a dozen in L.A., perhaps my conditioning has been extinguished and they no longer register in the memory banks.

Pauly Perrette really doesn't work as an example of "unconventional." An obvious contemporary example, of course, is Latifah. Lyndsey Marshal (Cleopatra on the HBO Rome series) also comes to mind. Or Samantha Morton. Or Angelique Kidjo.

To me Pauly Perette does not count as "not conventionally attractive".

Minnie Driver strikes me as an actress right on the edge of attractiveness, but for me she's extremely attractive. Almost all young actresses are attractive. You couldn't sell a movie with an all-homely cast except in some niche market.

B., speaking of titty bars, there's a woman-run family titty bar in Portland clled "Mary's club". It's about 35-40 years old and the the daughters are about to inherit it from the mom.

Arrrrrgh. But I have to go home soon, so I shouldn't start arguing. I'm just sick of "Hey, look at these pictures of beautiful women. While I, personally, am open minded enough to find them attractive, I must note for the sake of objectivity that they do not, in fact, meet objective standards of attractiveness." (Nothing against either of you, everyone else does it, and I understand that you almost certainly met 'not conventionally attractive' as a compliment.)

"Almost all young actresses are attractive."

One thing I remember from jury duty, surrounded by 500 randomly chosen dusgruntled people at 7 AM, is how few people are movie star beautiful, but how many are, by my standards, reasonably attractive.

180.--Well, the photographs are very well done, but there's the whole context of these men whacking off in a peep show.

So, not so dangly. Not so sweet.

There are a lot of women (actresses and such) who are conventionally considered "unconventionally attractive." The mind reels.

There is no such thing as "objective standards of attractiveness." There certainly are "conventional standards of attractiveness," which would be the reason someone like Latifah (for instance) doesn't get cast as an ingenue, and no I don't feel bound by them. Nor do I want a cookie for this, particularly; it's not "open-mindedness" so much as a greedier dispersal of one's Male Gaze Powers.

189 to 185.

"Not conventionally attractive" doesn't mean the same thing as "ugly." It's a term that floats a bit, and can mean everything from "weighs five pounds more than the Hollywood average" to "not blond" to "is pretty, but isn't the going style."

I'm not a moviegoer, which bars me from a lot of conversations and makes contemporary reality mysterious to me, but with the perspective of distance you become aware that it's very difficult for a movie to be realistic or serious about "issues", because looking at the hott actors, and especially actresses, and fantasizing either that they were you, or that that you could screw them, is so wired into the movie experience. As I said, imagine a movie without a single young, sexually attractive character in it.

192: imagine a movie without a single young, sexually attractive character in it.

How about The Old Man and the Sea?

I'm pre-cranky on this point because of other comment threads, which you weren't around for so they aren't your problem.

But. One hell of a lot of the pressure women get about their appearance is that the standards for acceptability are literally impossible to meet, and part of how that gets communicated is the endless picking over images of beautiful women and how they don't, quite, measure up. Oh, maybe passable, but you couldn't call a fat girl like the young Liz Taylor attractive, unless you were willing to overlook the weight problem. And whoever Pauly Perrette is, while a sensitive and discerning man might look past the flaws that keep her from being conventionally attractive, she's too weird looking to appeal to most people. And so on, and so on.

And you know, the thirty or forty millionth time you hear the same conversation, you do take a look at yourself in the nearest reflective object, and think golly, if that's the sort of reaction women who look like that elicit, I'm sure lucky I haven't had to dodge involuntary vomiting from people nauseated by my hideousness -- let me go throw a tarp over myself.

180:In what sense do you like those photos? What do you like about them?

Well, I certainly lost any masculinist guilt or self-conciousness, like, instantly. If I had any.

191: Or ugly. Come on, if you saw an exhibition of photographs described as of models who were "not conventionally attractive", would you expect to see exclusively beautiful but interesting looking people, or would you expect a broad assortment including odd looking and ugly people.

"As I said, imagine a movie without a single young, sexually attractive character in it."

Well, young for me being under fifty, and umm, personable? good-looking? nice to look at? being maybe 50 percent of the adult population, I can't imagine a world or day without such people.

Emerson, maybe you need to get out more.

My own add-on to LB's:

Also, these fucking Dove commercials and these everyday-titty photos? Being held up as the antidote to Hollywood, as "See? Beautiful women come in all types!"

How about: Get off women's looks, period. Be attracted to a primary thing other than her fucking looks. I get really weary of Beauty Comes In All Shapes And Sizes! campaigns.

193: There are some, but it's a tiny niche. And Spencer Tracy is a sexy guy.

It depends on context, doesn't it? If you hear an actress you're unfamiliar with who is playing a romantic lead described as "not conventionally attractive," you could safely assume that's intended in the sense Cala's talking about. If there's a photographic exhibition involving pictures of ordinary people who are described that way, not so much.

194: I'm pre-cranky on this point

So I see. And understandably so, from what I can remember of (say) the pig-in-a-slipper thread.

However, I'm not coming from the What Would Tyler Durden Do? angle here. To say that someone isn't compatible with certain conventions about beauty is not necessarily to endorse the conventions. I don't think it's a good thing that Latifah can't get cast as an ingenue; it simply is. I'm describing, not approving.

200 to 196.

Get off women's looks, period. Be attracted to a primary thing other than her fucking looks.

Do you have any suggestions?

Like her tight snatch.

Get off women's looks, period. Be attracted to a primary thing other than her fucking looks.

Would you settle for women's looks being treated more or less the same way as men's?

Sounds good to me.

In all seriousness, I mean as a marketing campaign, get off women's looks. I think most reasonable men are first attracted to a woman's appearance, but as they get to know her, personality trumps that way she bites her lip and her peek-a-boo nipples.

The Dove ad thing came up the other night while I was at a party with a bunch of actors. One of them, whom the rest of them seem to respect deeply, held forth on female beauty, followed by, "I mean, really, look at those Dove ads. I just really deeply respect what they're doing for women." But when he said "women," I think he meant "female actors and models," who seem to make up pretty much the full extent of his contact with women. If you live in a world that's so obsessed with stereotypical looks that a jaw-droppingly gorgeous woman of 45 is somehow a radical choice, or an excruciatingly beautiful size ten makes your eyes pop open in shock, then you have a skewed view of beauty to begin with.

Groovy. Now all we need is a way for people to get to know each other through marketing campaigns.

Now all we need is a way for people to get to know each other through marketing campaigns.

That's where craigslist comes in.

200 gets it. Still, I think that "not conventionally attractive" probably still implies "attractive", and that someone meaning to imply "ugly" women would probably euphemize it as "normal" or "everyday."

At an exhibition of photos, I'd probably expect a variety of body types but attractive faces.

I can definitely get behind 207. Better, reduce the amount of marketing of any sort by about 95%. (No, I have no idea how you'd do that.) It's not just attitudes toward women that get distorted by the need to sell people shit by crafting images for them to aspire to.

In all seriousness, I mean as a marketing campaign, get off women's looks.

A bit much to expect for a company in the cosmetics industry, no?

Part of the problem is that American film has worked for a long time to develop the audience's reaction to two incredibly hot people on screen at the same time. Because there isn't the time necessary for finding out about each other, films use the star system and knee-jerk symbols of attractiveness to justify their characters falling for each other at first sight. No one actually falls in love this way, but it is possible to fall in love with a person in an ad, and thereby the brand, that way.

My bf asked me a series of dumb questions once about whether I could fall in love at first sight with a stranger on a train. I suggested this was a product of his having auditioned for too many commercials.

I'm having difficulty articulating a joke inoffensive to a mainstream audience about how Dove is effective at keeping political candidates unconventionally clean.

You could suggest that you have an idea for a joke and then let us lightheartedly cajole you into delivering?

'Cause we're all about inoffensiveness to mainstream audiences and shit.

I for one have had it up to HERE with nose jobs. Où sont les nez d'antan? Hein? Hein?

I dunno, DS. I think Latifah is very much conventionally attractive, she's just heavier than most actresses. But pretty, to me at least, is all about the face.

I know that ogged has got my back on this one.

Wait, what if advertising doesn't owe anyone anything? Like, if people want to look at rail-thin people or dewy-eyed people or whatever, do ads owe those of us who don't look like that anything? I mean, we will never outnumber people who totally get off on that shit.

So follow me into the adless world! Put your TV in the closet and just watch Netflix movies and things with the commercials edited out! We choose what we expose ourselves to, and watching TV is a choice!

All right, that'll never happen either. Y'all love your TV, just like the patriarchy loves skinny chicks.

What about billboards?

I really value the internet and my blog as a forum where no one has based their impression of me on what I look like. Anyone who can stomach my drivel is basing their opinion solely on the incessant nonsense coming out of my head.

Y'all remember this Nietzsche quote?

In origin, Socrates belonged to the lowest class: Socrates was plebs. We know, we can still see for ourselves, how ugly he was. But ugliness, in itself an objection, is among the Greeks almost a refutation.

222: Seriously, Teo, once you stop watching TV, you really notice other advertising much less.

I'm trying to reconcile the notion of "tasteful" with the link in 180. So far, it ain't happening.

Beyonce's on the heavy side, right?

Don't worry, we're not escaping the world of stereotype. Black guys like big ladies: stereotype.

221: TV-free for the better part of half my life, including the last nine years. 225 is partially true and something I've noticed too, but there's still a shitload of advertising out there in magazines, newspapers, etc., and the TV stuff shapes the culture even if you don't participate in it directly.

Totally, Beyonce's an gigantisaurus. She must be so embarrassed.

221: That would be a great idea in a world without advertising on eggs.

That would be kind of funny to have sexy women on your eggs in the morning.

Or on your carp.

I spoke too soon:

The internet is abuzz with Beyonce's slim appearance at the Grammy Awards. Juxtaposed with her previous remarks about being a "natural fat girl," it has me slightly worried. I hope she's losing weight healthfully. Not to mention that I like her Bootylicious figure more than this new generic skinny Beyonce.

Part of the problem is that American film has worked for a long time to develop the audience's reaction to two incredibly hot people on screen at the same time. Because there isn't the time necessary for finding out about each other, films use the star system and knee-jerk symbols of attractiveness to justify their characters falling for each other at first sight.

It's been years since I saw the movie, but what made Before Sunrise stand out was the way, the presence of hot people notwithstanding, it took the time to show people going through the finding out about each other process.

Hey, lay off the carp. They didn't do anything to you.

219: I think Latifah is very much conventionally attractive, she's just heavier than most actresses.

True. But in a Hollywood where Jessica Alba feels the need to apologize for her "curves," that's a major deal.

I don't watch TV either, and although I hadn't really thought about it before I suppose it's true that I don't noticed other advertising as much anymore.

235 The carp made me puke buckets! My stomach still knots up. The carp is no friend of mine.

This distinction keeps getting lost (or people don't buy it), but how folks evaluate the beauty/weight/attractiveness of celebrities is very different from how they evaluate people they know.

Of course, I have no idea what we're talking about.

225, 228: Yeah, it's true there's lots of advertising out there, but something about not watching teevee kind of breaks the spell for me - the ads I do see seem much sillier and foreign. I'm less invested in the value system advertisers are trying to create/support.

The carp was dead. It had no legal responsibility.

Hatred of carp is diagnostic of syndromes and disorders. We suggest that you get help.

None of us have any idea what we're talking about at this point, Ogged.

We're talking about carp, motherfucker. And heightism in "Shrek".

Princess Fiona is fat but unconventionally attractive.

One of the nieces who had me watch "Shrek" is named Fiona. What are the odds on that?

Depends. What year was she born?

242:Ogged is talking about me in 224. Or maybe Keats.

I haven't deciphered the carp stuff yet.

Was wandering places I usually avoid last night, and the lady was watching something with James Belushi.

I says:That's, that's ...I know who that is.
Lady:No you don't.
I says:That is umm, the girl from Melrose Place, and umm the Mark Harmon movie about Summer
School.
Lady:No she isn't.
I says:Gonna look her up, surprised she is still working

It was Courtney Thorne-Smith, 43 I think. I also noticed Calista Flockhart and Anthony LaPaglia. Bunch of old ugly folk working on TV.

Movies are tough. Ezra and Sausagely buy tickets and they want to see Zach Braff. I am not the Zach Braff audience, and I watch my movies at home. Can't quite see Queen Latifah as Zach's soulmate.
Watched V for Vendetta last night, which had Portman and a posse of old fat people. Cept John Hurt, who couldn't be fat if he wanted to.

Queen Latifah could be a doctor or a forensic cop, though. Plenty of work if she doesn't expect high 6 figures for three weeks three times a year.

Fiona was not named after the Shrek Fiona nor after Apple Fiona nor is it a family name. That's all I've been told.

On the subject of images of breasts and women talking about their experiences of breasts this is a very good book -- from a 70's feminist consciousness raising point of view.

Are there other notable books in that genre? I realize my exposure is very limited but female friends to whom I have shown that book agree that it is noteworthy.

OK, in the interests of science, I looked at more than the small handful of photos I was comfortable peeking at from work, and aside from the hard-to-suppress "yay titties!" reaction, heebie's line about GGW for the NPR set fits pretty much exactly. That's a whole lot of very attractive women, posed in a "yay titties!" sort of way, with a few who are conspicuously older and/or bigger thrown in so it can pass as art instead of porn. Pretty nice porn, but still just partially-naked women presented for the enjoyment of those of us who enjoy that sort of thing.

Fiona's an increasingly popular name.

Wait a minute, at the risk of backtracking 80 posts to nitpick, describing Pauley Perrette as "slim with big tits" seems to add another whole level of complication to this discussion.

From the link provided earlier: http://tinyurl.com/23mwwd

All this "beauty" stuff is fraught with ambiguities, but I thought boob size was at least a basic thing all right thinking Americans could agree on.

I'm back. I'd like to claim I was out having my nose done, but the timing is all wrong.

I think I have a much broader definition of "conventionally attractive" than most people here seem to be working with. I think of it as covering all the people I could admit finding attractive without having conventional people I know go "huh? eew!" What I think of as unconventionally attractive would be the jolie laide, the ugly beauty (Ogged, you're so continental). It is possible to be attracted to someone who is ugly, you know. For their style, or their voice, or some quality of mind, even for their looks, if they're the right kind of ugly. You probably won't see the jolie laide in a Hollywood movie, though they show up in Almodovar's movies, from time to time.

Pauley Perrette is not a jolie laide, she's plain old jolie. NTTAWWT.

Not that that accedes the wang wrestler title?

Also, 252 gets it right.

Small world -- Buck and I were just looking through the linked pictures, and he saw a woman he went to college with at Penn State: the red head in Union Square.

252: I was looking at the picture in the acid green dress -- I suppose 'big' was an overstatement, but 'not flatchested' is fair.

250: Funny. I've had a chance to look through them as well, and the "GGW for the NPR set" description seems meaningless. It's topless shots of a bunch of women who don't look like porn stars, but if anything that meets that description is going to merit a GGW comparison then I don't see what the comparison illuminates. It's certainly a lot less skeevy than some of the reactions on the thread were leading me to expect.

I think the point of 250 is that it doesn't look anything like a cross-section of women on the street. Despite an admixture of women who 'aren't conventionally attractive' most of the images are of women, who, if not porn stars, are unusually attractive. Less a realistic 'this is what the world would look like if women didn't wear shirts' and more 'if you like looking at attractive women's breasts, this is significantly more tasteful than most porn.'

God, so the objection really is that they're attractive?

259: Less a realistic 'this is what the world would look like if women didn't wear shirts' and more 'if you like looking at attractive women's breasts, this is significantly more tasteful than most porn.'

That I'll buy. It's just comparing it to the date rape chic of GGW seems over the top.

Christ, you people can suck the fun out of anything.

No fun-sucking for me. I think it's pretty much a positive as these things go.

It seems like the relative attractiveness is more of, maybe, a sign or symptom of a larger annoyance: that while the project presents itself as being about the women themselves, and undermining the idea that the display of breasts is a taboo, sexual act, the women in the pictures do seem to be presented primarily, or significantly, as a display for the viewer's delectation. This goes with the claim that there is a cumulative effect that is more along the lines of realizing a fantasy of being able to remove women's shirts with the power of your (the viewer's) mind than a fuck-you to the powers that be who want to keep your (the subject of the picture) covered up.

Why can't the taboo be undermined by pictures of attractive women? In fact, I imagine that if most of the women were "not conventionally attractive," the obvious objection would be that they're not sexualized anyway, and so there's no undermining going on. It's putting something that we think is necessarily sexualized into a different or broader context that allows any undermining to happen, no?

The argument here seems to be that if viewers enjoy the pictures, the pictures can't be doing the work they purport to do, but that seems false: even if it's true that the enjoyment and the undermining are at cross purposes, the two things can happen together.

"if not porn stars, are unusually attractive."

My panda bear, if not a table lamp, is a panda bear.

This comment brought to you by somebody who has looked at porn.

Yeah, porn stars are not generally noted for their attractiveness.

ogged, I am afraid that someone has to make this clear: all art that proposes to "undermine" or "subvert" some norm or taboo or power hierarchy will always end up reinscribing them.

/Foucauldian cultural analysis.

266 is to say that, the fact that the women are attractive does not make the photos porn. In fact, it is rare to find a truly beautiful porn star, for the reason that truly beautiful women don't have to be porn stars. No, it's the "please whack off to me" intent--or the manifestation of that intent--that makes it porn. A blurry distinction, but more workable than calling every representation of a pretty woman pornography.

262, meet 37.

The argument here seems to be that if viewers enjoy the pictures, the pictures can't be doing the work they purport to do, but that seems false: even if it's true that the enjoyment and the undermining are at cross purposes, the two things can happen together.

You tool of the patriarchy, you'll never be a real liberal until you learn that nothing attractive can by truly authentic.

I can't tell if you're serious, JM.

269 is to say that, the fact that to say that is that. In fact.

262, meet 37.

In all fairness, washerdreyer tried to suck the fun out of this thread way back in 10.

As did Cala in 21. But when heebie did it it worked.

No, Cala was telling Bob he was being nutty, which is like blaming water for being wet.

Foucault was onto something. But in any case, I don't think it's a very shocking or noteworthy development that a photo layout doesn't quite live up to the high-flown rhetoric of its photographer. If I had a dime for every time I've seen work (highbrow or not) that claimed to subvert this or undermine that or problematize the other thing without really doing so... I'd have a large, large number of dimes. Doesn't mean the works themselves were annoying or without merit.

272.--I don't know if I'm serious either. It's an extremely common rhetorical move, or at least it was in the late 1990s; many people, myself included, have gotten pretty tired of the genre by now.

Unfortunately, it does seem to describe a lot of the so-called transgressive (subversive/bending/undermining/interrogating) art floating around out there.

I have to say, I hadn't seen anything that was said about the pictures before I saw them. I just thought they were cool. But I do think they do some work at "recontextualizing" breasts.

Unfortunately, it does seem to describe a lot of the so-called transgressive (subversive/bending/undermining/interrogating) art floating around out there.

Sure, most of which is crap, and which the creators/curators misunderstand and present poorly anyway. That said, I'm not sure Foucault ever makes the argument in 268, and am pretty sure that it's not right in any case.

I'm not one of those who was unhappy about these photos, which go into the "mostly harmless" and "fun to do and look at" categories for me; I would not claim that they were doing much in the way of cultural "work."

high-flown rhetoric of its photographer

There was text? It's soft-core porn. You used to be able to buy pictures like this in the store just between the head shop and the Chess King.

There was text? It's soft-core porn.

Sure. Soft-core porn with high-flown text.

It's soft-core porn.

So this is something you'd use to jerk off?

Oh, and FWIW I think a version of the argument in 268 is implicit in both volumes of The History of Sexuality. Some of the Big F's better work.

284: I'm an adult. If I want porn, I can get real porn.

I can get anthropomorphic shark porn.

I actually found the captions a lot more interesting than the pictures.

I was going to mention History of Sexuality, but to be honest, I think it's a move that was honed into cliché by followers.

The problem with the photo essay is that it's dull and uninteresting.

See, that's why I suggested that photographers photograph more pelicans. Reinscription, transgression, subversion, and estrangement don't come up so much in pelican photography.

Pretty little birds, yes. Game birds, yes.

Oh, and FWIW I think a version of the argument in 268 is implicit in both volumes of The History of Sexuality. Some of the Big F's better work.

I don't really want to get into a Foucault discussion, because it's been a long time since I read him, but do you really think that 268, as stated, is Foucauldian? One of the things he insists on is that epistemes and "norms" in general aren't natural and stable, but in fact always unstable, with significant breaks between the norms that govern one era or another. And within eras, power always flows in two directions, with the party which has less power resisting the party with more. Those relations in which one party truly can't offer any resistance are a small subset of power relations, which he calls "oppressive." (I know you know all this, but I'm rehearsing to jog my memory.) So I don't see how you can say that any attempts at resistance only strengthen the party with more power: Foucault was all about resistance.

I was going to mention History of Sexuality, but to be honest, I think it's a move that was honed into cliché by followers.

I'll comity on that.

Without having read any Foucault, but with having read stuff referencing him, the result of resistance seems to be always the inscription - not reinscription - of new norms. It's the existence of norms that can't be fought, but the relations of power can be shifted. Just remember that someone's always being oppressed in the new arrangements no matter what you do. Or something.

"not resincription" s/b "not necessarily the reinscription"

That's right. Power itself is inescapable--resistance never ends, etc. But like you say, the relations can be shifted, you're not stuck just re-inscribing norms.

"the same norms" I should say.

292.---That's a fairly stark restatement, and one that I think misses one of Foucault's big insights, which is that, particularly in the modern era, power circulates. Perhaps in the pre-industrial age there were clearly delineated parties, but today most people are caught up in a complex network of power-relations. Yes, resistance to the norm is an important moral imperative, but specific forms of resistance have already been encoded within the broader power structure.

In the History of Sexuality, Foucault's point is that the narrative of sexual liberation has created a system in which we are all compulsively acting out these miniature, repetitive dramas of sexual transgression. It's not any kind of social revolution, Foucault argues, if you have to reiterate your trangression four times a week to your therapist.

Anyway, I'm remembering that the argument in 268 really gets relevant around Judith Butler's set. Paul de Man's tragic worldview gets to a similar point with very different means. There was probably a convergence of thought somewhere along the way.

This seems like a good time to expose JM's commitment to foundationalism.

294-97: Right, it's just that by the time the cliché of 268 gets formalised, the notions of "new" and "same" and "different" have all been totally destablised. I think it's Derrida's essay on Artaud that is the litcrit reference on repetition as iteration.

But it's too late in the evening to be doing this.

specific forms of resistance have already been encoded within the broader power structure

Sure, but that speaks to the difficulty of resistance, not its possibility, right? Maybe this is just the philosopher in me getting handwavy with details and focusing on the principle, but I don't see that the complexity of power relations changes the point. Unless you're saying that these photos are a good example of apparent resistance with is already encoded in the existing power structure, which, fair enough--I guess that's been the discussion all along.

294,296 -- "Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering."

299 is great, eb.

I moved! Lacan circulates freely now!

(I'll be back to this thread in a few minutes.)

Thanks, it just goes to show that it's never too late to make a joke around here.

Oh, don't worry about it, JM, I'm just massively bored tonight for some reason.

I'm just massively bored tonight for some reason.

Welcome to my world.

When I was your age, kid...

...I was playing a lot of pool.

Always with the productivity!

I wouldn't have classified the photos as "soft-core porn" but it seems silly to talk about them as any form of resistance either.

Part of what makes Foucault seem so relevent to the photos is that they are so self-consciously cultural artifacts rather than documentary images. That is to say that the photos seem like they take as their reference point other images of clothed and naked women, rather than the women themselved.

Also, what DS said in 277

Neel is easy to find. Google to AliceNeel com.

Fuck. Having just spent an hour collecting Alice Neel, you guys are confusing me. Neel said she painted very pregnant women 8 times in order to desexualize feminine nudity. I have to find those paintings not only non-sexual but really really ugly or I am missing the point? Beautiful *because* resistant is "acting out repetitive dramas"? Or is it ok because she is a woman, and I am always masculinist because I am a straight guy, and I just can't look at a naked woman without sexism.

And I found a lot of...unconventional...Neel nudes, she admired German expressionism, so maybe Egon Schiele is pertinent. Andy Warhol had pendulous tits in his portrait, so her Self-portrait was just her style, and not with a particular point or purpose.

And there are some who would take offense at being called nutty, but they are all sane and care about being dismissed and demeaned.

Unless you're saying that these photos are a good example of apparent resistance with is already encoded in the existing power structure

Yeah, that's about it. But that would be a valid statement to describe most phenomena from a sufficient level of abstraction, which is why the "Reinscription! Reinscription!" argument gets very tiresome very quickly.

Continuing my earnestness let me try this as an argument. The photographs present themselves as images of spontenaity and happenstance, but I would argue that they are closer to being reflections of a pre-existing idea/image than images created with a sense of surprise and openness. They are improvisatory, but within a genre.

Looking at the back cover of the book linked in 249 I am stuck, by contrast, at how much emphasis they place on their own surprise and reaction to the process:

"I can't talk about my breatst without talking about being a woman"

"Breasts was born one day in the spring of International Women's Year. We wanted to produce a photographic catalog of breasts of women of all ages, without makeup or special lighting effects, unretouched, and without bias towards the preconceived cultural idea of 'beautiful breasts.' . . . "

"But something unexpected happened. During our photographic session the women, almost without exception, began impulsively to talk about themselves, making offhand remarks -- a self-conscious commentary on their breasts. Often these remarks were the trigger for a flood of associations from the past and anecdotes from the present. It dawned on us that our initial inspiration -- to celebrate the woman's movement through the visual metaphor of 'breast baring' -- was becoming literal. . . . "

"We were amazed at how basic and profoundly fundamental the experience of having breasts was to a woman's personality and lifestyle. . . . "

Obviously, to make that comparison is unfair to the photographs which, I think, are successful within very different goals. But I think that the goals of the photo essay are narrow, and that if they seem like eiher resistance or expanding the dialogue that is because they are situated within a dialogue (pop cultural images of women's bodies and breasts) that is impossibly narrow.

In college, some young men of my acquaintance would nickname a girl who had a fantastic body but a plain face "porn star."

310.--It's okay, Bob. Because power circulates, I can't look at a female body without sexism either. Twisty's key insight is a Foucauldian one, even if she might not use that word.

And there are some who would take offense at being called nutty, but they are all sane and care about being dismissed and demeaned.

No one can demean you except yourself.

It dawned on us that our initial inspiration -- to celebrate the woman's movement through the visual metaphor of 'breast baring' -- was becoming literal. . . .

Okay, now THIS is an excellent example of Foucauldian reinscription. A moment of spontaneous realisation, an idealistic collective project of liberation, and a culmination in a literalised essentialist cliché about womanhood.

That is not to say that the Breasts project is bad, or failed, or not interesting, or not resistant in its own way. I would like to spend some time looking at the book, and it probably would have been nice to grow up with it on my parents' shelves.

257: Fair enough. Though I'm not sure that "everything but completely flat chested" captures the implications of what's meant by the term "conventionally attractive".

259: I agree that this isn't a true cross section of regular people. Hell, most of the "old" and "not movie-star attractive" pictures are still way above the mean for their peer groups.

But as for the "porn" vs. "non porn" angle, I have sort of a hard to pin down reaction here. For me, the pictures themselves do in fact try and desexualize breasts a bit. But that's also exactly what I find, ahem, titilating about them.

Am I the only one who prefers their "porn" to be populated by people who you're sort of surprised to see participating?

Uncovered: Busting Out in the Big Apple This is a collection of photographs featuring bare-breasted women in public around New York City, often presented with interviews exploring the issues of body image and sexuality in America today. The informal and humorous nature of these images celebrates women without sexualizing or objectifying them, while creating the illusion of a tolerant world in which shirtless women go casually about their lives. Uncovered represents just one aspect of what America could look like if we were free of shame and liberated from moral judgment.

Uh, sure.

"No one can demean you except yourself"

Lot of text and stories about Neel. Making her sitters hold painful poses for hours, exaggerating and caricaturing features they were most sensitive about, like big ears or Warhol's breasts. Sounds like becoming the hot new thing in NY in her 60s, she decided to have fun and make money.

She "captured people's souls". His sitters said the same thing about Modigliani. Not sure his charisma didn't enable a fraud.

Incidentally, my dad has this story from the late 50s or early 60s about being hassled by the police for not wearing a shirt away from beach areas. It was either in Long Island (where he went to a summer camp) or Southern California (where he went to college).

Also, can I just say that the reason this blog kicks ass is that one cast post a comment about boobies, only to find that the discussion has switched over to Focault by the time you pressed "submit".

Rock on.

Am I the only one who prefers their "porn" to be populated by people who you're sort of surprised to see participating?

No.

Now that I am fully inebriated, I will admit that these pictures were totally pornographic for me, as it's pretty much how I wish the women of New York were all the time.

That is, I can't defend my liking them on political grounds. On the other hand, I can't think of anything I like sexually that can be defended on political grounds. So what I resent about these photos is NOT that they "objectify" women sexually, but that they're pretending not to objectify them, when clearly, they help me do something I do all the time, which is imagine ladies doing their everyday thing with their tops off.

Okay, now THIS is an excellent example of Foucauldian reinscription. A moment of spontaneous realisation, an idealistic collective project of liberation, and a culmination in a literalised essentialist cliché about womanhood.

Hmmm, I want to think about this. I don't know whether I agree with your analysis, but if I do, it's a powerful example.

"Am I the only one who prefers their "porn" to be populated by people who you're sort of surprised to see participating?"

Don't look too deep under the fantasy. Most aren't professionals but short-timers, and not very good actors. If you see the real people under the masks, porn gets even uglier. Or interesting in the sad way that so many people are sad and desperate.

I don't watch TV, but wasn't there a show where guys would run into walls for 500 dollars?

Following up on 324, I think the word "culmination" is doing a lot of work in your comment. You describe a movement in which, trying to overturn cliche, they arrive at cliche. But I don't know if I buy that description of the quoted sentence. The authors say they started out with an idea that was both intended as resistence and also describably by the cliche of "breast bearing." But, as they were working on it the project changed.

I'm curious what essentialist cliche you see it "culminating" in. Or are you just talking about the language describing the project rather than the project itself?

wasn't there a show where guys would run into walls for 500 dollars?

NASCAR! Only they're paid much more, I think.

wasn't there a show where guys would run into walls for 500 dollars?

There's a bit of this in Bumfights, but I think they were being paid with booze.

I can't defend my liking them on political grounds

Why should you? Politics is a stupid and dreary lens through which to evaluate art.

NickS, I'm going with the language describing the project, for now. I don't really know what the project ended up looking like or what it meant for its participants. The celebratory language, though, sets off all my "beware, beware!" alarms.

I mean---
"We were amazed at how basic and profoundly fundamental the experience of having breasts was to a woman's personality and lifestyle"
---reify much?

I'm just playing at being doctrinaire, though.

Why should you? Politics is a stupid and dreary lens through which to evaluate art.

Because, obviously, the people who are packaging the pictures are trying to get us to appreciate them on political grounds, just like the Dove ad people are trying to convince us that what they're doing is politically more acceptable than "regular" ads. They're still selling women's bodies as entertainment.

The fact that this packaging of women's bodies happens to entertain me far more than "regular" porn is telling only of my (our?) sexual tastes, not of their political superiority.

Interesting. To me the language feels dated, which makes the ways in which it is trapped in the language of its time more obvious, but that doesn't set off the alarm bells for me. But I am weighing whether I think it should set off alarm bells.

I find the second example more convincing. That is a very, very, clear example of, as you say, reinscribing the norm.

I'm just playing at being doctrinaire, though.

I realize, and I appreciated your initial caveat that this wasn't an attempt at judgement of the project. But I appreciate because I feel like in this case you are working at a lower level of abstraction than the tired move described in 311.

I didn't read anything on the site. I mostly try not to pay attention to what artists say, as they're invariably saying something retarded.

332: I don't buy it, though. Whether or not you use Dove products is not a political decision. Neither is whether or not you enjoy this guy's photography. I mean, obviously it can be, if you decide that's how you're going to ground all your aesthetic and grocery store decisions. Similarly, you could base all those decisions on whether you believe they are in accordance with biblical teachings. But criminy, why would you do either willingly?

NickS, I think I initially seized upon the first phrase because it was so amazingly naive about metaphors becoming literal---but in a totally new, revolutionary sort of way!

But press releases and artistic statements have always been and will always be fish in a barrel.

The point is that both Dove and this photographer are explicitly using political considerations to market their products. Whether or not it's effective is a separate issue, but it's definitely there.

I understand that, but I don't feel obligated to salivate at their bell-ringing.

Also I'm drunk and about to fall asleep and apt not to make much sense, so weight accordingly.

Did anyone say you should?

Bacon, apo! Bacon!

I mean---
"We were amazed at how basic and profoundly fundamental the experience of having breasts was to a woman's personality and lifestyle"
---reify much?

Okay, it's late but I have a thought which I will try to get into a reasonable shape.

I think there are two methods of resisting cultural norms that can be in confilct -- self consciousness and re-invention, and bringing into the cultural sphere experiences and activities that are excluded by those norms. (reifying the cliche that action and reflection are in opposition).

My personal tendencies are toward the former, but I have more sympathy with the latter.

Any project that is based around sitting down with random people and starting a conversation while inevitably contain cliches -- because we mostly think and talk in cliches. But I still believe that trying to expand the range of experience that exists in the shared cultural realm is resistence.

The other challenge, of course, in making that distinction is that it implies that there are experiences that are either unmediated or less mediated that can be shared without immediately making them mediated. I also tend to think this is true, practically speaking, but problematic theoretically.

Bacon, apo! Bacon!

"It was not really until the '60s that Freud discovered, or overcame his reticence for, the nude -- I suspect he was influenced in this by his friendship with Francis Bacon. But Bacon's nudes are invariably trapped or imprisoned; they are decomposed or howling at the sense of permanent torture."

Tell me you didn't put "bacon" and "nude" in the search box together.

Now ogged is appealing to empiricism.

(Naked Bacon, a good band name, noted.)

345: I did.

Y'know, two great tastes that taste great together or some such.

two great tastes that taste great together

Yeah, I'm with you. One is yummy in my tummy and the other is an offensive and oppressive concept created by the patriarchy.

Bacon is not just a concept, Ogged.

Mmmmm, nudity.

I agree, NickS, which is why most theoretical frameworks seem to be much too pitiless to allow much hope for practical cultural or political work.

Academic feminism has been a major battlefield for such discussions. The theorists have largely come to a place in which gender categories have become so unstable that to call oneself a feminist almost seems antiquated (this was a gigantic issue in a hire at my university not too long ago). But the historical project of feminism--to unearth stiffled voices, to bring gender and bodies into discussion, to expand the canon--is still very much ongoing.

This is all part of a general discussion going on in the humanities. Some book titles: "Consequences of Theory," "What's Left After Theory?"... I'm sure there are more, but they're not coming to me.

"But I still believe that trying to expand the range of experience that exists in the shared cultural realm is resistence."

I feel enabled! Permitted! Liberated!

Yet some would say I was insufficiently mediated.

Thanks, apo I was trying to remember Francis Bacon all day. All I could come up with was Balthus, and I would never mention that name on this blog.

From a historical perspective, I thought this was an interesting article. It's paywalled, though, which is too bad. Some of the historical journals at that site are making the articles, but not reviews, free, but not that one.

Mmmmm, nudity.

Apparently some time ago there were some comments about masturbation and pornography and whether people found viewing the former an instance of the latter? I believe either eb or teo had a post on his own blog about this (the conceptual similarity of the names and the dreariness of design that seems endemic to many wordpress blogs means that I can never remember which is which). (Ah, here we go.) Perhaps this site came up in that earlier discussion, but perhaps not; anyway, when the site first came up it was posted on mefi and there were more samples, and I attest that many of them were teh hott.

That site did not come up in the earlier discussion, though I had heard about it at some point (probably when it started). Looks interesting.

I don't think teo's site design is that easily confused with mine. Also.

Oh, well, you know, I was turned down for the Kotsko fellowship this year.

The site's pretty old by now.

357: Well, objectification and othering is pretty much contextual. Beautiful Agony is pretty clearly pornography (I don't use the word in any sort of pejorative sense), in the sense that its designed to appeal to a sexual or prurient interest, even if it's a fairly aesthetic appeal. I think there's a clear difference of degree, if not of kind, between Beautiful Agony and these nudes. Even if the nudes also (IMHO) largely appeal to an erotic aesthetic, I'd draw a fuzzy but real distinction between 'appealing to an erotic aesthetic' and 'prurient'.

So just now I finally went and looked at some of the pictures -- like the first 10 or 15 -- with (the first 2/3 or so of) this thread in mind. And I want to know, how are those photos about staring at titties? In most of the pictures I looked at, the titties did not seem like the focal point of the picture -- my eye was drawn to the subjects' faces and to their surroundings before to their chests. I liked several of the pictures I saw a lot, particularly the lady feeding the pigeons, the construction worker, and the cell-phone talker. Also Teo is right about the captions, they are well worth reading.

Think about that construction worker photo. The focal point is totally her hat -- your eye jumps right to the hat and to her face, then moves to the man walking past and to the construction scene. Her being topless is part of the picture but it's not about gawking at titties.

I don't think that you need special insights or terminology from Foucault (God bless him) to understand why this project couldn't have the weight it seems to have wished to have. The liberation from Puritanism thing is a century or two old, and it's had various stages and there has also been a series reactions against the specific (sexist) forms liberation has taken, and then another reaction against feminist puritanism (so-called), so by now this guy is one of about a thousand people working in that same line right there in NYC, trying to find a slightly different nuance or gimmick which will make his work be noticable in that overcrowded market. As long as the market exists people will be producing for it, but it's saturated and most of the angles have already been played many times.

To me it makes a lot more sense to find some mediocre, more or less satisfactory working solution to that specific complex of problems (repression, liberation, voyeurism, the male gaze, etc.) insofar as they can't be avoided, and go on and work on something not directly related. The alternative is to do what this guy has done, and continue to fight for market share in a niche market which is probably dwindling.

Keep in mind that I burned out on sexual politics and the eternal avant garde 30 years ago, so my being mostly uninterested in this stuff is completely predictable.

I think the problem (which problem?) lies in trying to 'desexualize' things. If I look at a clothed woman and think 'Gee, I'd fuck her!' having her take her clothes off is not going to improve the situation. In happy unicornland people (men) don't automatically think about sex with every woman they see but I haven't been deported there yet. C'est la vie.

However, if you really wanted to try and desexualize something, this thread gifted me with the idea of making a porn movie with people wearing monkey suits and you could call it... Planet of the Fuckin' Apes.

m, sadly, somebody would really really enjoy that porn flick artistic endeavour

Y'all have moved on, but I think this, from AWB, is an important insight: On the other hand, I can't think of anything I like sexually that can be defended on political grounds.

most theoretical frameworks seem to be much too pitiless to allow much hope for practical cultural or political work.

Yes, well, that is also a cliche at this point.

I do think the tension is real, and that both, crudely, self-consciousness and unself-consciousness have their place.

Interestingly, I was most recently thinking about this having attended a performance by Anna Deavere Smith and thinking about the idea of experimental theatre. Her work is liberating in one way by bringing unconventional and unexpected voices to the stage, but I was struck by how constrained it is, in another way, by the fact that she is clearly seeking to replicate taped interviews. Which is to say that if you think spontenaity and improvisation are also experiments, she gives that up in her performances in the name of a different experiment.

I suspect I am being too brief in my description, I can elaborate if anyone cares.

Eros and desire seem to be a basically irresponsible and uncontrolled part of life, where for a moment you follow your impulses without judging them or trying to control them. "You follow the desires you have, not the desires you wish you had". For that reason, the whole business of critiquing heterosexual men's (or anyone else's) stereotypical habits of desire seems off-target.

To me this also means that desire is a random, often terribly destructive force, and not really the kind wonderful warm fuzzy the old-time liberationists promised us (before most people were born).

"Deavere" s/b "Nicole"

365, 366, 367: As someone who was griping, I think this is all fair, and people certainly will follow their desires without considering larger implications. And the photo essay wasn't offensive -- it was reasonably tasteful and pleasant. If I was griping about anything, it was the characterization of what looks like "GGW for the NPR set" -- that is, a collection of pictures of half naked women taken in a manner that focuses on their erotic appeal (that's the GGW bit) but without the sort of aggressive hostility of actual GGW (which is why it's aimed at the NPR set) -- as something other than soft porn. It's pleasant, inoffensive porn, and if you want to look at tits for their erotic appeal, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for straight men and queer women to want to do, they're fine pictures to look at.

But it irritates me having the photoessay discussed as if it were about freeing women from self-consciousness or treating nakedness as something that doesn't have to be sexual. If that were the goal, it wouldn't be a collection of mostly slim, mostly white, women arching their backs to display their mostly very attractive tits. I'm not trying to stamp out porn, I just don't like a pornographic fantasy packaged as something else.

Again, porn? Fine, so long as the people involved aren't suffering, which certainly seems to be the case here. "No, really, this is about liberating women -- it's just a coincidence that they mostly happen to be very sexually attractive and posed to emphasize that" on the other hand, makes me cross.

In happy unicornland people (men) don't automatically think about sex with every woman they see but I haven't been deported there yet.

Hell, even when one is old and gray the T&Adar still works even if one doesn't quite remember why. Maybe it would be useful to differentiate between the "male gaze", which isn't going to go away absent some genetic tinkering, and "stare", "threatening and boorish behavour", etc.

369: Yep. There are projects such as The Shape of a Mother, which actually do show a wide assortment of women's bodies without being at all sexualised (though like the Fuckin' Apes, I'm sure some would find it so). I'm sure there are more people doing work like that too.

Isn't that why people are saying they don't like e.g. Lucian Freud; because his paintings aren't pornified enough?

(I haven't looked at the linked photos. I've seen plenty of tits in my time.)

369:

But it irritates me having the photoessay discussed as if it were about freeing women from self-consciousness or treating nakedness as something that doesn't have to be sexual.

Y'know, I care not what the photographer alleges he's doing. The photos -- and admittedly, I have not looked at all of them by a long shot, certainly not as a series -- made *me*, a woman who would very much like to feel freer to take my shirt off on occasion, as men are able to, smile.

Some of the photos I viewed do seem a celebration of women's bodies (tits?), and women should surely be free to enjoy themselves, when they do enjoy themselves.

Sexuality can be innocent rather than pornographied. It's childlike. I'm a little mystified by the insistence that those pictures are chiefly of sexually attractive (in the conventional sense) women. I saw quite a few flabby bellies there.

LB is prone to being irritated.

In the old country-hippy nudist days mentioned above by McManus, you really did see a random sample of imperfect bodies. This was a completely different thing than the orgy scene, which tended to be young people, plus a few scuzzy, ancient swingers as old as maybe 35. (According to what my friends told me, anyway). I don't think that country-hippy nudism ever succeeded in desexualizing young, conventionally-attractive women though.

I'm also wondering where the idea that all or even a majority, or even a substantial minority, of the shots are of women with their backs arched. The first photo is a backbend, but other than that, there's very little classic posing.

Isn't that why people are saying they don't like e.g. Lucian Freud; because his paintings aren't pornified enough?

No. Lucian Freud is disappointing because he's so damned painterly; because he made his models pose endlessly, until they became dessicated in spirit; because he's *clinical*, stripping his subjects of humanity and making them objects.

Word is that his early still lifes are good. Though. He paints women as though they're apples and nectarines on a plate.

I used to know Pacific Islanders from places where female toplessness is normal. They said that back there nice breasts are appreciated the way a pretty face is here, but doesn't automatically trigger sexual thinking. While in the US they learned the American way and went to topless bars, etc., and had to decompress when they went back home. (Customs were changing back there anyway, with women covering up).

The taboo area for them was the leg above the knee. Those jokey "grass skirts" really were necessary for medesty's sake, and wearing a modern swimsuit was for them the equivalent of toplessness.

In Victorian England the cads and bounders would try to catch glimpses of women's ankles, and China has foot fetishism.

[End of information dump],

It's doubtful that a taboo/incitement can be neutralized just by systematically violating it now and then. Widespread violation over time would be required to change anything.

Donald Kuspit said that Lucian Freud commits violence against WASPs as revenge for the Holocaust.

I do think he inflects bodies with death; he thanotizes them rather than eroticizes them. Among portrait artists who treat the body as bodies, who pornographize them, I'd include Wyeth and some others but not Freud.

I just Googled up some Freud and he seems to use a lot of grotesque, minute detail to make almost everyone look unpleasant, uncomfortable, sweaty, and unhappy.

This is lame, but I really do agree with both sides here. Yes, LB is right; the pretense that taking nude photos of women of whatever shape could be liberating and enlivening and all that is BS. We're never outside the patriarchy, and nekkid wimmins is nekkid wimmins for dudely eyes, always.

However, in the localized context of my eyes, and parsimon's, looking at these nekkid wimmins can be titillating, a fantasy of being outside the patriarchy and able to enjoy your own body without worrying if dudes like it or not, and downright pleasurable.

The problem is not knowing how sincere any photographer can be in taking photos of tits while pretending that there was never a several-thousand-year history of "artistically" representing women's tits for male titillation and female shaming, under the guise of appreciation for the female body.

It is a painting truism but you really do need to see a Freud in person.

I adore Freud, and do not think his subjects all look sweaty and unhappy. Or grotesque, for that matter.

(Sometimes grotesque, but far from always.)

What would happen if, in addition to analogies, we also banned use of "the patriarchy" and "the male gaze?"

I'm not sure how to make sense of the claim that "nekkid wimmins is nekkid wimmins for dudely eyes, always." They're naked in a very different way in a doctor's office, for example. That all happens within "the patriarchy" and it requires explicit training to recontextualize breasts as clinical objects, but what things mean can change. And the fact that there are people who are titillated by scenes or thoughts of medical examination doesn't mean that the examination isn't clinical, or is really just porn. I can't tell if people are making the claim that these particular pictures don't do any work at recontextualizing or that that no pictures could.

Actually, I think that a lot of guy doctors do have trouble recontextualizing nice-looking, healthy women. It's not uncommon for them to cross the line, and a lot of them are standard average macho stud types.

I can't tell if people are making the claim that these particular pictures don't do any work at recontextualizing or that that no pictures could.

FWIW, I was arguing that if those pictures do any work it is very slight. I think the series is well executed, appealing, and well within the bounds of existing cultural imagery.

Perhaps that is really the significance of the references to "The NPR set" -- that if the series is liberal it is so by a very limited and conventional sense of "liberal".

I can't tell if people are making the claim that these particular pictures don't do any work at recontextualizing or that that no pictures could

I would think (or at least I believe) that the claim is that you are ceding too much autonomy to the pictures. They can't do anything without the viewer, and if the viewer is inclined to say "Titties! Hooray!," pictures of breasts are likely to end up being viewed as soft-core porn by such viewers. If you want to make the "many things are happening at once" argument, then I'm going to say, "Yes, but men (purportedly) think about sex every seven seconds, and that drive is going to predominate absent specific training."

It's not uncommon for them to cross the line

Come on, John.

having attended a performance by Anna Deavere Smith and thinking about the idea of experimental theatre. Her work is liberating in one way by bringing unconventional and unexpected voices to the stage, but I was struck by how constrained it is, in another way, by the fact that she is clearly seeking to replicate taped interviews.

This is especially interesting to me because I had this a similar thought (less well articulated) about her book Talk to Me. Say more?

I can't tell if people are making the claim that these particular pictures don't do any work at recontextualizing or that that no pictures could.

Bleh, not having read other responses to this, but yeah, it seems to me that some are claiming that no pictures could.

Which just sort of makes me snort.

I can't tell if people are making the claim that these particular pictures don't do any work at recontextualizing or that that no pictures could.

I was understanding heebie, LB and B as arguing that these particular pictures either don't do enough or any work.

I don't think I've read anyone saying that no pictures could.

This or that go a lot further in saying, "here are breasts; this is what they look like; they're useful; deal with it" for me. Normal women, in reasonably relaxed state, not trying to impress anyone. But I have no idea what sort of message the photographer in the linked set is trying to convey.

Geez, leave to get some sleep and the thread starts philosophising itself...

171: My main point was that a binary "pretty/ugly" is ridiculous. "Looks" or "attractiveness" or whatever are a bell curve - there will be a few stunningly beautiful people, a few distressingly ugly people, but most are not going to be on the extreme ends. [Yes, I know it's more complicated than that - there are social factors, there are fetish factors, there are people who are so full of presence that their personalities override any physical appearance.] My secondary point was that it seemed that heebie was still buying into the Patriarchal Paradigm of Pretty on a personal basis if her initial reaction was to type "ugly" instead of "ordinary" or "not as attractive" [still a PPP word].

345: Writer Joe Haldeman cooks bacon in the nude, as it forces him to keep the heat down and not burn the stuff to death. [heat high=splatter=ouch!!! if nekkid]

363: The liberation from Puritanism thing is a century or two old

Ha! Murrcans are incredibly puritanical. Despite the fact that "Murrcan" rhymes with a wiglet for the pudenda.

373: country-hippy nudism

Ah, the good old days. Of course "conventionally attractive" back then would be "fat cow" now. Plus que ça change...

Ya see, DEx, the revolt against Puritanism just reinscribed Puritanism, so that now we have Puritanism and anti-Puritanism running in parallel constantly.

Forget that stuff. Pelicans are virgin territory, innocent of inscription and reinscription.

"so that now we have Puritanism and anti-Puritanism running in parallel constantly."

Sometimes, strangely, working in furtherance of the same goal.

I have definitely known people who went at sexual liberation with grim Puritan determination, working off rulebooks and lists telling them what proper liberation really is.

Anybody got any good links for pelican porn?

391: I don't think that making harsh esthetic judgements = buying in to the patriarchy, and I think it's rather low to spring on HB with these accusations because she's been honest about feelings she has had in the past. I doubt if there's anyone here who hasn't dealt with similar feelings.

Anyway, the way everyone reacts, you'd think that the word "ugly" meant "someone I'd like not to exist". Ugliness can be quite interesting.

Everyone is beautiful in their own way? Sure, and all your rainbow ponies are in the mail.

394:

I have definitely known people who went at sexual liberation with grim Puritan determination, working off rulebooks and lists telling them what proper liberation really is.

John, your notion of sexual liberation is outdated. Go hang out on the west coast of British Columbia, why don't cha? They have no rule-books, and aren't even remotely grim. Fuck, they routinely strip off their clothes to go swimming, and nobody sweats it. They certainly think you're weird if you yourself have a problem with this. Though they will respect your hang-up, absolutely.

No, but John, I know you know this. I'm kidding.

379:

However, in the localized context of my eyes, and parsimon's, looking at these nekkid wimmins can be titillating, a fantasy of being outside the patriarchy and able to enjoy your own body without worrying if dudes like it or not, and downright pleasurable

I'm talking too much, but this surprised me as a representation of my own view. I'd not have formulated it this way. Not "titillating," not a fantasy. But generally I get it, and thanks to AWB for showing me something.

I'm surprised there wasn't more outrage about ogged's 176.

What would happen if, in addition to analogies, we also banned use of "the patriarchy" and "the male gaze?"

Tinkerbell would come back to life! Only you can save her, ogged! Only you!

Perhaps the whole Unfogged family should devote itself to freeing Ogged from the objectification of boobies.

Liberate the whole world, one patriarch at a time!

(.)(.)

Jeez, text, you just got him all roused up again.

Y'know, I care not what the photographer alleges he's doing.

PARSIMON WINS!!!

Everybody else take note.

John, your notion of sexual liberation is outdated.

I prefer to think of my notion of sexual liberation as "classic." Country-hippy nudism is "archaic" -- that sounds like your BC nude beaches, and Deadheads and such. The Puritan liberationists I was thinking about were ones who had long discussions about bla bla bla, starting with Norman Mailer and continuing right up to the present.

You know, I haven't seen anyone address my claim that the women in the pictures don't look comfortable. It seems important to the argument that the pictures present "women in everyday situations" to talk about that; it's my perception of a stiffness or deliberateness in a lot of the postures that bothers me, and if anyone else sees it, doesn't it kind of undercut the claim that the photos are naturalistic except for the shirtlessness?

It was pictures of women in uncomfortable everyday situations, being uncomfortable in a natural, unposed way.

my claim that the women in the pictures don't look comfortable

You seem to be saying that people posing for photographs looks posed, which really doesn't seem a very remarkable claim. I don't think the women look particularly uncomfortable. It looks to me like the instructions from the photographer often were to imagine there was no camera there.

This is especially interesting to me because I had this a similar thought (less well articulated) about her book Talk to Me. Say more?

My reference point is more music than theatre because I know people that are folk musicians. I will quote from the liner notes of their most recent album of familiar traditional songs:

This is a collection of songs that are fun to sing. Most of them are old and have survived for generations because people learned them, sang them, and made them their own. They become companions in people's lives. They fit snugly in human memory and are easy to carry around and give to someone else.

You might that our versions of these songs are different from yours. It is not uncommon for someone to say "that' not how the song goes." You may have heard (or said it) yourself. It's particularly true with folk songs.

Pop songs usually have one source. Even though singers may personalize it, there is usually one version that most people have heard. Folk Songs don't have one source. No one know who wrote them yet they have been sung for many years in many different places . . .

One of the most basic reasons for resistance to pop culture is because it excludes certain experiences. One of the ways in which it excludes experiences is by framing certain categories of experience as requiring authority to perform -- people are not in the habit of making up verses to their favorite songs so they think of the experience of songwriting as external, as something songwriters do; people are used to having doctors validate their health or ill health and become less used to paying attention to how stress or diet or environment affect their health.

Anna Deavere Smith is interested in bringing to the stage experiences that are excluded by pop culture and, has done so very successfully. But she's doing it in a way that's very different from how my friend does. My friend is interested in having the people in the audience draw on their own personal experience as a resource, Anna Deavere Smith is trying to bring stories and present experience for the audience.

Two different ways of locating excluded experiences.

406: A big part of it for me is that the claim of artlessness is so transparent for me (I agree totally with LB and AWB on this one) that I pretty much just see posing. I don't see uncomfortable posing.

To connect the dots in 409 a little more explicitly I'm saying that Anna Deavere Smith's pieces were like the pop song in that there is a definitive version that the performance references and seeks to replicate. I found it notable, watching the performance that, while it was broad in the range of people and experiences portrayed, that in it's format it reiinforced the standard of fidelity to a fixed source "text".

Hence the connection to tensions between different ways of pushing boundaries.

Are you people saying that women with large, cute breasts don't normally flop them on their laptop keyboard? I guss you just know different people than I do.

Anna Deavere Smith's pieces were like the pop song in that there is a definitive version that the performance references and seeks to replicate. [...] it reiinforced the standard of fidelity to a fixed source "text".

Yes, I saw that somewhat in the book too. It's like a fixed improvisation. On the one hand pushing the boundaries of what "counts" as legitimate, and on the other hand playing it pretty safe.

Well, that's interesting to hear. I'd still like to see her live performance if I ever get the chance.

412: Our tech support people say it happens all the time.

It's interesting to see the selections people are making in the Jordan Matter shots. I see a mixed bag of posed and grab shots, relaxed and self-conscious, and a wide range of body types. I seriously doubt he's going to "subvert the dominant paradigm", that happens without the initiator being aware it's going to happen, like Turing and his "bombes" at Bletchley Park, William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain and the transistor, and Yugglesnort, who said, "Fuck this packing up and moving all the time, I'm staying right here with the kids and grow enough food to last through next winter".

Yeah, but he might end up ranking with Wild Bill Emerson, the first man to set his guitar on fire.

406: I didn't notice any great amount of stiffness or discomfort in most of the poses, and I can't say I agree with your related point about eye contact. Plenty of the shots seem to involve studied aloofness, distraction or busy-ness (sometimes combined with sillyness, cf. the official titty shot of Unfogged), but that doesn't say "something's wrong" to me.

All right. I didn't spend a ton of time looking at them (like the rest of you pervs), so I'll concede that my reaction to them is mine and mine alone.

396: I don't think that making harsh esthetic judgements = buying in to the patriarchy, and I think it's rather low to spring on HB with these accusations

Again, you missed my rather obvious [and restated] point: In real life, it's not binary, not 1 -or- 0, not "pretty" -or- "ugly". It isn't an occasion of making a "harsh" æsthetic judgement; it's buying into that girlie magazine set theory: That all that is not "pretty" is de facto"ugly". Contrary to your disingenuous mystification that anyone took exception to its use to describe some of the subjects of the photos, the word has very negative connotations and denotations. [Vide a list of synonyms: repulsive, offensive, despicable, morally reprehensible, atrocious, provoking horror, surly...] No one said anything about "everyone [being] beautiful"; exception was taken to the concept that anyone who was not beautiful was therefore ugly. And, for women especially, that is a mindset that can only damage the perceiver and the perceived. When "ordinary" is equated to "ugly", an impossible standard is set and demanded and most women will fail to meet it.

Learn the difference between an observation and an accusation. Inviting someone to examine a particular expression isn't pointing a finger and yelling "J'accuse", nor is suggesting that, perhaps, a mindset previously alluded to might still be affecting someone's perception.

What about "unconventionally attractive"? I like that description much better than "not conventionally attractive", which phrase the imagined speaker of sounds pretty smarmy to my ear. Whereas I can totally imagine saying Kim is unconventionally hott.

In the real world, there are lots of guys that find heavier girls to be the height of hotness and would think that Kim to be entirely and flawlessly lustworthy.

Viewed: 76 pictures; however, I am discarding the lawnful of TopFree-ladies, as this would skew the Hot Titty Models v. ordinary women. There were five back views, tits only in the imagination; cannot be counted at Hot Titty Models. So, 70 pictures:

Ordinary, general: 20 [this includes the pregnant woman and the nursing woman; it does not include the 40 year old who claims men don't look at her anymore.]

Ordinary, not a size 6: 4 women had either little tummy pooches or were not skinny, but were not fat, by any means.

Ordinary, size AA: 2 who were very small-chested, not what one would typically imagine as HTM.

Soooo - 28 out of 70 were not HTM. That's about 40%.

Arched backs: well, really, only the woman bent backwards in the snow. To the extent that others have any back arch, it has more to do with ordinary position [lying on elbows on the grass, dancing, etc.] than a deliberate show-off-those-boobs shot.

And now I'm going to go off and look at the Biophysicist's new haircut, because all those tits reminded me of Woodstock and I'm having flashbacks. Don't take the brown acid.

Was there ever really brown acid?

Clownae: I like that. I know "not conventionally attractive" is lacking in goodness as a term; I'm just tired of "pretty" v. everything else.

I once knew a guy who complained bitterly that American girls were too skinny, "too many bones". By US standards, he was drop dead gorgeous, but the women he dated were, by US standards, Rubenesque. He was mystified when his dorm-mates insisted he could "do better". As far as he was concerned, he was doing perfectly.

Yes, there was brown acid. And orange acid. And blotter acid. And some nice shrooms. And lots and lots of grass unsuitable for little baa-lambs and moo-cows to eat. And lots titties and ditties all covered in mud. I vaguely remember there being music.

Kim just made me want to grab a bra. My chest felt heavier just looking at her.

Some Rubens portraits are pretty unconventional.

there are lots of guys that would think Kim to be entirely and flawlessly lustworthy.

(raises hand)

426: So is that what people have in mind when they speak of Rubenesque beauties?

This or this, typically. Not your average waif. Comfortable to cuddle with after, as my friend used to say.

Learn the difference between an observation and an accusation. Inviting someone to examine a particular expression isn't pointing a finger and yelling "J'accuse",

Ah. I didn't realize that condescension is your default mode. Learn the difference between an invitation and a public slap.

429: I didn't realize that condescension is your default mode.

??? I fail to see the supposed "condescension" or "public slap" in DEx's original comment.