fracas

Because Robert Scoble is a dedicated blogger and father with the confidence to become a lactivist, I’ve just learned that Facebook hates boobs. My boobs, your boobs, your mom’s boobs, your sister’s boobs, Vanessa Hudgen’s boobs, Britney Spears’ boobs, Jean Louisa Kelly’s boobs, Lindsay Lohan’s boobs, Paris Hilton’s boobs, Shyamali Malakar’s boobs, real boobs, fake boobs, and even (yes, I am serious) Pamela Anderson’s boobs and Dolly Parton’s boobs.

Even if those boobs are breastfeeding.

According to this article (graciously provided by Scoble), five of Karen Speed’s photos were deleted last month and her account shut down because Facebook considers her breastfeeding photos to be obscene. There’s even a petition about it in the new Facebook group called “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”

This isn’t a new issue. Over at The Thinking Blog, they’ve had a Show Your Support For Topless Women  campaign for some time. Even people fracas knows have taken it to their own blogs by way of the little support button… people like Hazel  and John. 

Over at Scoble’s blog, comments to his post are many. As one commenter (Sue) put it, “We live in a society where “adult” means dirty, where “woman” means fat, and where men think they should take off their shirts in public but make it a crime when women do.” 

I’m not sure I agree.

Well, I’m not disagreeing with breastfeeding, and I’m not agreeing with Facebook (who hates your boobs, remember)  as much as I’m not sure that it’s true that men have the freedom to display their boobs (manboobs to be specific) at their whim while women don’t. I’m also not convinced that women are so hard done by when it comes to the displaying of their boobs.

You see, in some situations, women seem to be able to get away with a lot of boob-age or use of boobs, flaunting of boobs, whatever you want to call it, and men in the same situation are not.

Case in point: Cooking shows.

Nigella Lawson (of Nigella Bites and Nigella Feasts)  and Giada De Laurentiis (of Giada’s Weekend Getaways and Everyday Italian) are two good examples where it seems to be ok to use a woman’s boobs to the advantage. Having watched both of their shows and noting how many of the camera angles involve that which favours their boobs, I can say that regardless of whether a woman has larger boobs (such as with Lawson) or small boobs (such as with De Laurentiis) the camera angle used is going to favour the boobs.

It’s a given.

Giada’s producers obviously choose to make up for her lack of cup size with abundance of view, and she regularly wears very low cut thinly knit tops to allow for the bending-over-the-bowl shots to play what she’s got to her advantage. With Nigella, it’s not always about the low cut as much as it is about the size and the flirting that goes along with it. Lawson’s producers show boob shots that, despite the mammoth mammaries being covered more sufficiently than De Laurentiis’, still give the viewer what they want because it is paired with Lawson’s frequent “tasting” of her fare, expressed by the sucking her fingers, and that kind of thing.

But do we see this when it comes to the male food show hosts? Have we ever been taunted by any show of chest-age from, oh, say… Bobby Flay (of Boy Meets Grill and Throwdown with Bobby Flay ), Alton Brown (of Good Eats with Alton Brown ) or even Duff (of Ace of Cakes)? No.

I won’t even bother comparing Emeril Lagasse (of Emeril Live), because we all know he was swaddled like a newborn what with all the chef’s jackets and aprons.  Despite his trademark “BAM” thing, it wasn’t even close to a “wham bam, thank you ma’am” kind of thing. No, all in all, there’s a clear and present “boobs are good if you’re a woman but not if you’re a man” thing happening where it comes to food shows.

Why? I don’t know. I’m not so sure boobs hanging into the batter makes for a better muffin so I have this sneaky suspicion it’s that women’s boobs get ratings. And so that makes it ok.

Case in point: YouTube

A few weeks back, I was on holidays. I did however, leave a quantity of posts that I’d written in advance and timestamped to appear while I was gone. One of those posts was  Fracas Supports Man Boobs… You Can Too!  In this post, I provided a video from YouTube, showing a point being made by the user known as visiblemode, that boobs are ok to be shown so long as they’re female, yet not if they’re male. In jest, he’d posted a video that showed him squinching (yes, that is a word) his chest together in a close-up that made it appear to be boobs. He was doing so to point out how so many women and girls are able to flaunt their boobs all over YouTube while the male gender is not. His video was flagged and made viewable only to those over 18, and he was justifiably perplexed at the whole thing. I thought he made such a good point, that I created the BUST Stereotypes campaign contained within that post. I admit, once back from holidays, I’ve not put as much effort into promoting that campaign as I’d like to.

So perhaps Facebook coming out and owning up to hating your boobs is a good thing because it’s given me the chance to call some attention to the situations at hand.  There honestly seems to be no rhyme or reason to why any site would suddenly decide to delete breastfeeding photos or flag a video of a male chest as “adult”. On each side, we have people mounting campaigns because they feel the “situation” is unjust when the reality is, that there just doesn’t seem to be any consensus.

At one site, boobs are good, boobs are used to flaunt and promote anything and everything. At another site, they’re bad and banned. Ditto for male boobs and male chests. While men can indeed, walk the streets without a shirt, visiblemode’s experience proves that while he can walk to the store for a soda without a shirt, he can’t post his chest on YouTube for anyone under 18 to see.

It’s a good thing we can escape from all these controversial and confusing situations by spending a few hours viewing the latest (possibly) underage photos of a totally naked Vanessa Hudgens, or review our old bookmarks of all those Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan crotch shots.

Because we all know that those things are great, but a baby breastfeeding or a guy joking about his manboobs…

Throw them in the brink.

It’s for the betterment of society. Really.