Wulfie's Wurld

Editorial: Nipples

Well, now that I have your attention . . .

And why do I have your attention? It's just a simple word. So what attracted your attention to that word? Was it a good connotation or a bad connotation? Did you start reading because you expecting something along the lines of a terrorist attack, or something along the lines of freshly baked bread, hot out of the oven? Pause for a moment and ask yourself that before continuing on. Are nipples good or bad?

Let's face it, nine times out of ten (or perhaps more like 99 times out of 100), when someone says or writes "nipples" (particularly as I did, using the plural), the listener/reader thinks of female breasts. Naked ones.

But aren't female breasts pornographic? Let's think about that for a moment.

Place yourself in the shoes of a censor or editor somewhere, say for a magazine, and you're checking the ads to make sure nothing inappropriate gets published. The ad is using a scantily clad female to sell whatever it is they're selling, which is a common practice. Imagine the female is in a low-cut evening gown. Like dancing the limbo, how low can you go? Stop at the clavicle? Nope, you can go lower. Stop at the top of the breasts and show no cleavage? Nope you can go lower. Where do you stop? Exactly at the point where the nipple is about to be revealed. Right? If you show the nipple, you've moved into the territory of "pr0n."

Speaking of cleavage, that's okay too, right? You can show cleavage all the way down to the navel. But how wide can that cleavage gap go? You guessed it. To the nipple.

What about the other directions? How high on the breast can you show before what you show enters the shadowy world of pr0n? How much of the side of the breast can you show? The answer is the same, isn't it? You can show up to, but not including the nipple.

Do you know what that means? Breasts are not considered pornographic. Only nipples. Does that make sense? Don't males have nipples as well? And isn't it okay to show male nipples in ads, on national television, and in public? What's the difference between male and female nipples? Size. What else is there? I can only assume that all our laws of pornography, written by male legislators and enforced by males police and male judges (remember, females are only recently in those ranks), are the result of "nipple envy."

How crazy is that?

Let me leave you with one more question. What would you rather see a picture of--and keep in mind only one of the choices is allowed on national news--bloodied bodies after a terrorist attack, or nipples?