The Daily Newds 1/7/09

• The photographer who took the photos of the skier caught upside down with his genitals exposed on a ski lift has been suspended from his job.
• Police in Gahanna, Ohio, have decided not to press felony charges against high school students who exchanged nude photos with their cell phones.
• Another columnist comes out in support of the breastfeeding mothers protesting Facebook's anti-nudity policy.

  The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees that breastfeeding is the healthiest alternative for newborns. If a photograph encourages it, we should support the photo. And any nursing mom can tell you that her sore boobs are off limits for those with a "prurient interest in sex." That's more than can be said for "facebook's hottest bikini babes."

• If you are in the Boston area you can check out The Naked Comedy Showcase tonight at ImprovBoston in Cambridge.
• The Orillia Museum of Art in Canada is hosting Fully Exposed: Celebrating the Nude.

  The good work engages the viewer, challenges him or her to be an active participant, to enter into an intimate conversation, to assess and interpret the emotion and thought aroused by the figure. Ultimately, the image touches something deeper, taking the viewer a bit further into the process of understanding our human condition.

• The LA Times article Oscar in the Nude is causing some subscribers to cancel the newspaper.
• Is a painted body really nude?

  I always wonder about the silliness of censorship, how our society is at times so proudly sensitive and yet so base and vulgar at the same time. It occurs to me just now that perhaps both exist not in spite of each other but because of each other.

• The town planning board in Vassalboro, Maine, has approved an application for a topless coffee shop.

  Despite complaints and objections, town officials said there was nothing they could do to stop Donald Crabtree from opening the shop. No Vassalboro town ordinance prohibits such a business, and if residents formed a committee, drew up such an ordinance and the town approved it, Crabtree's business still would be grandfathered in, unaffected.

• Dr. Richard Wagner is a sex therapist and an admitted pornographer.

  Admittedly, porn is a thorny issue in our sex-negative culture. Lots of people are hostile to the notion that there could actually be something uplifting and life affirming about the depiction, in any medium, of sexual behaviors. Lots of people believe that even nudity, let alone full-blown sex, is bad and that it corrupts the consumer, especially if the consumer is young and impressionable. I don’t happen to share that view.

• Some new perspectives have emerged regarding the attempt to ban women from sunbathing topfree on Australia beaches.

  Wollongong’s Danielle Hefferman said she personally did not have an issue with women exposing their breasts on beaches.
  
  “I think it would be good if they had more designated topless or nudist beaches,” she said.
  
  Mrs Hefferman said her children might stare at a woman who was sunbathing topless for a while, and might make a comment, but the novelty would wear off quickly.
  
  She said she could not recall seeing any topless bathers at beaches in Wollongong.
  
  Sydney’s David Howse said he did not think it was a big deal.
  
  “If people are offended by it, they can walk off,” he said.

Tags: nudism, naturism, nudist, nudists, naturist, naturists, nudity, nudes, bare, au naturel, nude, naked