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Kiddie nudes: Where was the editor?

This is totally off-topic, but have you seen the photo that appears on the front page of the Home section in today’s New York Times? Look at it closely, and then consider that it runs over a story asking the slightly titillating question of whether letting kids run around nude is OK. It made me wonder where the heck their editor was, and what on earth he was smoking!

Personally, I don’t think letting your kids trot around the house or the fully fenced backyard in the altogether is some sort of moral issue. Nudity isn’t especially objectionable in my book, and nudity among small children is benign enough. But… I think we have to consider the context of the society in which we live.

First, many Americans do consider a state of undress to be some sort of moral issue, and they are abhorred at the very thought of nude three-year-olds running rampant across the landscape. We may consider that to be their problem. But really: civil people don’t go around offending other people’s sensibilities on purpose. It’s common courtesy to teach your children to dress modestly in public and before guests.

Second, and more to the point: we live in a culture that is inundated with sexual imagery, much of it quite violent. We know that a surprising number of adults—women as well as men—develop unhealthy cravings for small children, and that quite a few will act on these cravings. Teaching the kiddies some modesty is, alas, the better part of valor.

To my eye, the Times‘s photo is pretty sexualized. Am I crazy? Note the position of the little boy’s hand vis-à-vis the thigh of the man standing near him, and the handsomely exposed legs of the woman in the foreground. Maybe I’m nuts…but IMHO the Times‘s Home editor should have exercised a little discretion.

Whaddaya think? Nuts or prissy?