The ANNOTICO Report

There is no way I can't get into trouble if I make a comment. Silence is the better part of Valor :)

The Australian
Emma Tom
March 02, 2005

WHICHEVER way you look at it, the female boob is extremely awkward terrain.

Take the difficulties experienced by the hero of a short story called The
Naked Bosom by Italian writer Italo Calvino. Palomar is a discreet and
thoughtful chap. So when he passes a topless sunbather on a lonely beach,
he goes to great lengths to avert his eyes. After all, why should a
peaceful beachgoer have to scrabble to cover herself from the intruding
gaze of astranger?

But the moment our anxious hero reaches safer ground and is once again able
to move his eyeballs freely, he has second thoughts. By pointedly looking
away, he decides with dismay, he is actually reinforcing the convention
that declares any sight of the breast illicit.

"That is to say, I create a kind of mental brassiere suspended between my
eyes and that bosom that, from the flash that reached the edge of my visual
field, seemed to me fresh and pleasant to the eye," he agonises. "In other
words, my not looking presupposes that I am thinking of that nakedness,
worrying about it; and this is basically an indiscreet and reactionary
attitude."

Palomar about-turns and strolls past the sunbather again, this time
ensuring his eyes are fixed straight ahead and sweep with impartial
uniformity over the landscape so the naked bosom receives no more attention
than the retreating waves or the boats pulled up on shore.

"There," he congratulates himself. "Ihave succeeded in having the bosom
completely absorbed by the landscape, so that my gaze counted no more than
the gaze of a seagull or hake."

But yet again, he decides he has committed a terrible faux pas. After all,
what sort of unforgivable misogynist would objectify a woman by flattening
her to the level of things?

Passing the problematic bosom for a third time, Palomar allows himself a
darting glance to indicate he is fully aware of the breast's special value.
"In this way I believe my position is made quite clear," he concludes,
"with no possible misunderstandings."

Once more, however, his peace is short-lived. After all, surely the
sunbather will regard his fleeting glimpse as "an underestimation of what a
breast is and means ... somehow putting it aside, on the margin, or in
parenthesis".

With determination, he turns and retraces his steps, this time lingering on
the breast so the solitary sunbather realises once and for all that he is
free of all perverse assumptions.

Imagine his horror, therefore, when the woman springs to her feet with an
impatient huff and stomps off.

The moral of The Naked Bosom, of course, is that when it comes to upholding
decency, it is possible to think far too much.

While operating within a very different philosophical paradigm to Palomar,
the puritanical army currently attempting to purge the US of sex and
obscenity is also ruminating with an intensity that cannot be healthy.

Outlawing Indecency, a new documentary that screened on SBS last night,
reveals that the real sexual fetishists are not shady characters in gimp
suits, but Christian activists. They're the ones who go on about the
lecherous dangers of low-rider daks (which Louisiana recently attempted to
penalise with a six-month jail term) and Janet Jackson's nipple (which one
litigant claimed had caused countless Americans serious injury) with an
obsession bordering on the lascivious.

The rest of us just have sex every so often, and move on.

The irony is that many moral campaigners spend way more time dwelling on
sin than the contaminated souls they claim they're trying to save.
Jackson's boob would have come and gone if it hadn't been for the extended
outrage. And religious activists spend way more time rabbiting on about
sodomy than gay men do.

Perhaps the healthiest position when it comes to such matters is a Palomar
stage two or three. When surveying the social landscape try to keep an
impartial uniformity and avoid getting too fixated by the boosie wah wahs.
After all – regardless of whether your intentions are perverse,
philosophical or puritanical – the end result will still look like ogling.

etom@bigpond.com

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