*NSFW (Thread Has Nudity)* Photo Exhibition Shut Down in Copenhagen

[Sundae]

When I first read about this, I was appalled.
A female photographer, whose photos of normal women was to be exhibited in Denark, was denied permission on grounds of obscenity. The series of photographs were taken to combat negative body image and show that the female form does not have to conform to model standards to be beautiful.

I was quite shocked at this puritan attitude - are we now the European Taliban?
What gives - the female form IS beautiful and beauty should be appreciated in all its forms.

Then I clocked the photos - or at least some of them.
Via this article in The Independent (credit) Christopher Hooton.
If you click on this link you can scroll through. Don't do it at work though (the reason I hesitated to put this in the Gender Equality thread)

These women are all slim, all beautiful and in more than one photo their outer labia are clearly on display.
It did nothing for my body image, but I imagine even enlightened men would be distracted by the sight of a shaven snatch whilst hurrying through a city square.
I stop short of calling it pornography. I do not believe it is intentionally sexualising women. But I think if the artist Mathilde Grafström really thinks this is thought-provoking art, rather than something which will please men more than inspire women then I think she is being naiive.

Hang it in an art gallery. Nothing disgusting about women, nekkid or otherwise.
But don't put it on display in a public place.

[Clodfobble]

You're absolutely right, Sundae. Her train of thought seems to be, "Some of these girls have smallish tits, therefore I am really rocking the boat on standards of beauty!"

But even beyond that, to insist "ugly is beautiful" is to miss the point. How about we judge on non-physical-appearance standards altogether? We should work on making "compelling," and "captivating," and "inspiring," and "brilliant" the compliments of the day, rather than trying to redefine something that is evolutionarily bred into us.

Symmetrical faces are beautiful. Mathematically ideal waist-to-hip ratios are beautiful. The first person we fucked is, on some level in our animal brains, permanently beautiful. Those things will never change. Beautiful is nice, but it's not worth elevating by defiance.

[Undertoad]

Agreed

And, it's art, it's just BAD art!

That is ACTUALLY WHY we are reacting like this

Don't put bad art on display in a public place.

There has been great art that has used the outer labia, and highly sexualized women; it's all about context innit? Here the artist has placed these lovely ordinary women into ordinary and expected contexts. Oh look, she's in the trees. What am we supposed to draw from that? Does it make us think or feel anything in particular at all?

[Gravdigr]

I'll take a half-dozen number 12's, please.




The pix look like rejected FemJoy photos. I enjoyed them. Not as much as I'd like to, but, I'm short, fat, ugly, and I live in Kentucky, so...

[Big Sarge]

Those don't look like normal women to me. Those ladies look half starved

[footfootfoot]

Not obscene, by the Miller test, and like Grav said, they look like porn that didn't make the FemJoy cut.
She's no Jock Sturges, that's for sure.

Link is SFW.

If anyone does some image searching of Sturges and is not familiar with his ... body of work, before we launch into a witch hunt, let's have a reminder about 1st amendment and obscenity laws, The Miller v. California test:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California.[2] It has three parts:

Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,

Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[3] specifically defined by applicable state law,

Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[4]
The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.

The first two prongs of the Miller test are held to the standards of the community, and the last prong is held to what is reasonable to a person of the United States as a whole. The national reasonable person standard of the third prong acts as a check on the community standard of the first two prongs, allowing protection for works that in a certain community might be considered obscene but on a national level might have redeeming value.

For legal scholars, several issues are important. One is that the test allows for community standards rather than a national standard. What offends the average person in Manhattan, Kansas, may differ from what offends the average person in Manhattan, New York.[5] The relevant community, however, is not defined.

Another important issue is that Miller Test asks for an interpretation of what the "average" person finds offensive, rather than what the more sensitive persons in the community are offended by, as obscenity was defined by the previous test, the Hicklin test, stemming from the English precedent.

In practice, pornography showing genitalia and sexual acts is not ipso facto obscene according to the Miller test. For instance, in 2000 a jury in Provo, Utah, took only a few minutes to clear Larry Peterman, owner of a Movie Buffs video store, in Utah County, Utah, a region which had often boasted of being one of the most conservative areas in the United States. Researchers had shown that guests at the local Marriott Hotel were disproportionately large consumers of pay-per-view pornographic material, accessing far more material than the store was distributing.[6]

[xoxoxoBruce]

Any photograph which has women in it, appeals to my prurient interest, I don't care if she's wearing a snowmobiling suit, or a burka.

[Undertoad]

From the Spencer Tunick "Naked States" project



The model completes the art by explaining her part in it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

She could keep you warm on a cold winter night.

I guess the twin towers will divide history to pre and post 9/11 forever.

[BigV]

what towers?

[Sheldonrs]

I didn't see anything I'd want. Lol

[Undertoad]

Then you missed the point.

[Sundae]

I dunno. Sheldon (and Grav) suggest it's a catalogue as opposed to an art exhibition.
They may have a point.

[Undertoad]

Oh I thought he was talking about the Tunick item. ~ nevermind ~

[Sundae]

Ah. He may have been. In which case I'm wrong, but not in a way which bugs me