A Need for Censorship?

Blushing Boys

I wonder if there are two stages of keeping scandelous images from young eyes - or maybe four? Three if you include young enough not to care and four if you include old enough that it is deemed permissible. I am wondering about in between infancy and adulthood.

Where I am considering this from is from an age when I used to be horribly embarrassed by the ladies of the covers of "Cosmopolitan". I might have just been a very easily embarrassed young boy, but I think boys who are old enough to understand, but aren't ready can just be very embarrassed by sexual images. For me it was the cleavage that was always showing. As far as I knew at that young age it was the whole breast that was what perhaps shouldn't be seen and there it was on display on magazine racks at the grocery store.

Of course at the time seeing any bit of underwear was shocking. The sight of a bra strap for example was shocking. That was the 60s -- before material girls started wearing lingerie on the outside of their clothes or slips as dresses. It was also when burning a bra was a real statement because all women wore bras.

I guess this is a bit sexist, but I can only really speak from my point of view at the time and not a girl's.

I know I was also fairly scandalized by the catalogue and the lingerie section... and then there came a time when it became intriguing.

It makes me think that there is a time when young people really do not want to see anything blatantly sexual. It is a time perhaps of innocence -- a time when they should be allowed to keep that innocence. That age is different I think for everyone, but I think it is a reason why we kept adult magazines behind counters and kept children out of certain sorts of places. It wasn't so much to keep them from being perverted, but because the children really didn't want to see it and were very uncomfortable with it. I am meaning before that age where they become very interested.

Mind you I suspect that I might be in the minority with my belief on that..

Later!
~ Darrell

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