a perfect stranger
got a comment on flickr saturday night, on this photo:
Ok. I’m a perfect stranger over here, and I was looking at some of your great photography linked to here from your blog. I think you have a beautiful family and you are obviously really in love with your wife and a good father, but I can’t for the life of me understand why you would keep pictures like this freely available in a photoset next to pictures of your sweet little daughter. A) you’re bound to have guys who are out trolling for pics tagged with “strippers” find your photostream which would easily lead them to pictures of your daughter including the ones of her in the bathtub, and this may be a bit more subjective and judgmental, B) how can you be a husband and father to a little girl and support the objectification of women such as in the previous photos of men gathered around watching simulated sex acts? What if your little girl grows up to think that letting guys pay her to take her clothes off or eat out another chick is OK? What if in 15 years you’re surfing around online and find pictures like this of your Charlotte? Maybe its time to delete, or at least make private, some of your history…
from here.
on one hand, i’m surprised it’s taken this long to get a comment like this. đ
on the other, i have a few things to say in rebuttal. it seems unlikely that someone with no pictures and no favorites and no friends on flickr is going to be returning to check for replies, so i’ll just go ahead and post it here (apparently, that’s the way this person took on the way to flickr anyway–through the blog). through the magic of the interweb i can cross link the two!
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argument A: people trolling for pics of strippers on flickr will be titillated by my naked/bathing 3-year old daughter.
hmm. i’m not sure i’m following this logic. it seems to me that someone interested in pics of naked/bathing kids is going to search for that (by using keywords like kid, kids, naked, nude, bath, bathing, shower, etc), whereas someone searching for pics of strippers (using keywords like stripper, party, bachelor party, dildo, naked, tits, ass, pussy, cunt, snatch, money, whore, slut) are actually interested in pics of strippers.
i suppose that dastardly keyword “naked” could be used for both, but hey, they’re both naked, and being naked isn’t such a bad thing. besides, someone searching a portal like flickr with a ubiquitous keyword like “naked” and landing on one of my pictures has a probability of 5 in 397,895, and these are the five pics with that keyword–none of which are a picture of my daughter.
besides, the single most viewed picture on my stream is this one— a picture of my scrumptiously delectable wife in my basement. by comparison the “stripper” pics don’t have nearly as many views. so if # of views are an indication of what people are looking at in my stream, my wife is in an almost untouchable lead (she also holds spots two and three), and would certainly be a more likely conduit to draw in the horny hoardes of pedophiles. however, i still don’t see a large overlap between the kiddy porn aficionados and the milf/cougar crowd. in fact, one could argue that the two forms of eroticism are nearly diametrically opposed (though inextricably linked through birth itself).
come to think of it, i wonder why the commenter didn’t even mention my wife? god forbid my daughter grows up to be like THAT hussy.
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argument B) perpetuating the objectification of women, including my daughter.
this is an interesting one, with a huge number of facets. where to begin?
something that immediately bothered me about the tone of the comment is the inherent condescension regarding strippers. “What if your little girl grows up to think that letting guys pay her to take her clothes off or eat out another chick is OK?”
hmm. i have to be honest–i didn’t know that it WASN’T ok.
we’ve all heard the countless horror stories of the women trapped and/or coerced into the profession, reduced to commodities at the detriment to their self-esteem and sense of value. i don’t disagree that there are some out there that ARE in such a position. i also know for a fact that the friends of mine that have become lawyers feel the same way–they don’t feel particularly good about themselves, or what they do for a living, but they can’t switch careers and start over at a lower pay-scale. i know a lot of roofers in that exact situation too. it looks to me a lot more like a “worker” thing and not a “sex-worker” thing.
i particularly don’t subscribe to the idea that in situations such as this, the women are the ones being “taken advantage” of. in fact in the vast majority of cases i think it’s just the opposite… i think strippers and strip clubs are one of the very best examples of MALE commodification you can find. consider it a moment: i’m going to sit at the edge of a stage, and continually fork over money, sometimes competing with other males for your attention, so you can dance and move around, partially dressed, while i can see you?
it’s an absurd situation.
the MEN in strip clubs are far more pitiful than the women. trust me on this one. or don’t, and go to one and see for yourself–you won’t burst into flames upon entrance to the building, and if you’re female you’ll probably get in for free anyway. observe the spectacle as men express themselves not through the movement of dance, nor through the beauty of their physical forms, but rather through the denominations of their bills:
at the end of the night, the men go home with unsatisfied hard-ons, and the strippers go home with buckets of money (and dildos). who pulled one over on whom?
i don’t buy into the “objectification” argument either. just what exactly does that mean? that we are enjoying some physical manifestation of another person? damn, if THAT is really the issue then all of society is in danger… there isn’t a single aspect of media that does not leverage “physicality” in that definition of objectification. why is it ok to objectify someone’s sense of humor, but not someone’s tits? are actors and models hired because of their value systems, or because of how they look on the camera? am i bad person because my wife and i decided we wanted a “small dog” rather than a large one?
i’m weary of objectification getting such a bad rap. human beings ARE objects. we can be created and destroyed, broken and repaired, photographed, carried, washed, and healed. people who rail against objectification are living a fantasy where we are nothing but ephemeral spirits. in the world i live in, my wife and daughter, sister and mother are all objects, and so am i–and so is my small dog alice.
the condescending tone reaches a crescendo with the following sentence: “What if in 15 years youâre surfing around online and find pictures like this of your Charlotte?” (as if it’s the absolute WORST thing that could ever befall me and my family.)
well, the first thing i’ll do is see how good the pictures are.
the second thing i’ll do is ask her if she’s retained publishing rights to the photos.
the third thing i’ll do is ask her what she’s learned from the process, and if she’s happy with the way it turned out.
in 15 years she’ll be an adult in the eyes of the law, and her life will be her own (even though it already is–she just doesn’t know it yet because we haven’t told her). the idea that someone would feel shame and guilt and embarrassment speaks more about the viewer of the picture than it does the subject. what does the fact that such an image exists mean TO THEM? that they’ve failed as a parent? that they’ve “lost” their child to the dark side?
i’m still wondering how taking clothes OFF for money as a stripper is any different than putting them ON for money as a model.
the only answer is that most people can’t handle sex–particularly ironic because it’s why any of us are here in the first place. no sex = no humans, right?
am i the only one who sees art and athleticism in a well-executed tupperware party?
as my best buddy bren says, “it’s only skin.” except sometimes, it’s not skin–it’s plastic:
(lest you think we’re objectifying her, i’d like to note that we gave her her first shot in her fledgling acting career.)