GIP: icons, breasts, nursing, et cetera

[redbird]

This image is not obscene, but I suspect that more people will be disturbed by it than by a photo or painting of a nursing mother, whether or not her aureolae are visible: .

I was thinking about the arguments about default icons and obscenity, and realized that most images of naked breasts are either of breastfeeding or intended as explicitly sexual (and yes, some are both).

There are images of naked or partially naked women that are neither, but focusing specifically on a naked breast makes it difficult to get away from that. Especially at 100×100 pixels, which often means cropping the image to omit the woman's face and most of the rest of her body.

This icon wouldn't violate the Terms of Service for a default, not because breasts aren't obscene; not because it's glorious and defiant; but because it's of a breast cancer survivor, and the ToS are focused on nipples, not tattoos or scars. [It's not my default; for the moment, the purple trilobite keeps that status.]

Comments

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I don't have a good sense for how images change when you scale them down to icon size. But I will point out that the new LJ TOS exclude depicting even a single woman's nipple in a default icon, and thus would exclude the picture you show. The image draws the eye because of the scar and the tattoo (and the expression), but LJ considers it unsuitable because of the breast on the other side. Unsuitable for default icons, that is. They don't mind anyone using it the way you're using it.

There's nothing remotely objectionable about it in any case. I've seen a lot of posts about how pictures of topless women are intrinsically obscene. While I object to pictures in my social networks, and would prefer to do without them altogether, it's worth noting that you are posting from New York State, where it is legal for a woman to be topless in public for whatever (noncommercial) reason seems good to her. She can nurse a baby, she can take her shirt off in hot weather -- the laws against indecent exposure were made egalitarian back in the early 1990s.

[redbird]

Hence the careful cropping of this image.

And yes, I'm in New York. LJ is in California, where breastfeeding as an activity or image is explicitly legal.

[redbird]

Sorry if the above comment is confusing, I forgot that you don't show icons when you look at LJ. The icon I made from the image shows only the right side of Metzger's torso, the post-mastectomy breast with the tattoo and no nipple.