On another post, I quickly mentioned two or three eye-boggling real life naturist incidents which highlighted, for me, the need for constant vigilance in ensuring hard-won freedoms are maintained.

The first relates to the fall-out created by Instagram’s ‘no nipples’ policy. They defended their decision to rigidly censor (female) nipples by saying ‘Instagram must be safe for teens and adults’, as bland a platitude as I’ve ever heard.

1. If you’re an adult likely to be offended by the sight of a female nipple, you’re obviously too fragile and precious to live.

2. Teens won’t be coming to Instagram to see nipples. More likely they’re surfing the net for all manner of hardcore porn sites.

So in that respect Instagram haven’t really presented a considered, valid policy at all.

And Scout Willis has lasered her way into the hollowness of the argument by pointing out that Instagram seem perfectly at ease with ‘objectification’ photos captioned with demeaning phrases like ‘big titty broads’.

So…Instagram…you’re really keeping it safe for teens and adults there, covertly suggesting that your site is safe for people who may routinely refer to women as a ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’. They may not, of course, but ‘big titty broads’ suggests that they’re the type who does. I just wonder how many adults regard the place as ‘unsafe’ for them simply because they’re being subjected to this sort of misogynistic nonsense? Does Instagram want to make their site safe for women not to be demeaned by such language?

I have to confess that it was only in following these stories that I became aware Rihanna had previously had problems with Instagram and the cover of a magazine she posed for (I really should keep up with teenage culture a bit more).

Moral compass? Nipples, no. Fire-spitting death bringers? Instagram’s ‘awash’ with them. Allegedly.

Next? Portland police are offering advice to people who may be offended by Portland’s (night time?) World Naked Bike Ride. Or so I’ve read. The report I read here is written in a way that it’s hard to tell whether it’s an actual, serious reporting of this, or simply satire, such is the banality of the objections raised.

Clearly more dangerous than the television news.

“I’m not accostomed to seeing naked people,” said (resident) Kathy Goertz.

But I’ll be she, and any other of her neighbours, will have been subjected, practically daily, to images of (depending on these gentle souls’ ages), the napalming of Vietnam, 9/11, Iraqi dead in Bush War 1 & Bush War 2, the blood and gore or London’d 7/7 bombings, or the realer-than-real gruesome, graphic violence in, say, ‘Game of Thrones’ or any of those sensationalist, realer-than-real murder scenes portrayed, nightly, on television news or drama programmes. Which is preferable? Someone’s breasts or (largely hidden) genitals whizzing by in an instant? Or the harrowing descriptions of real life disasters played out on the news on a daily basis? Get a grip, people!

Finally, Eva Green has posed for a poster for a film called ‘Sin City 2’ (again, the name, to me, inferred it was a computer game, initially, but apparently it’s a movie). And, whoa! She’s shown ‘too much nipple’. Well…strictly speaking, the ‘curve of under breast and dark nipple/areola circle visible through sheer gown.’ As with the Portland Police reporting, the lines are blurred between what’s factual and what’s, theoretically, satirical. I mean, tell me you don’t think the reason provided for banning the poster isn’t the prose of someone still pissed at never having had their one and only soft-porn novel published.

I’m not seeing this monstrous, outrageous thing, readers. Are you?

The hardened cynic in me suggests that the storm whipped up about her nipple may just be more of a success than the film itself, but I’m not best placed to judge, not having stepped into a cinema in a dozen years or more (with the unlikelihood I shall ever do so again…I just don’t care enough about modern cinema. Too many explosions and not enough black and white for my liking).

‘I’ve been especially bad’, the tagline provided, might more reasonably be the performances of the director and cast…who knows?

I think, for me, the disturbing thing is that people focus on this sort of thing and work themselves into a lather about a nipple…nipples…a penis….a vagina…than they will about…well, let’s look at today’s (June 5th’s) main stories from around the globe. Three Canadian Mounties dead. Nigerian ‘preacher’ kills dozens. 200+ dead due to Ebola virus in Guinea. Yemenese attack kills 14. Sectarian violence in India. But no…people prefer to make tits out of themselves over the smallest, most inconsequential things.

Ella