NEWS
EVENTS
Can we really justify the censorship on night time, my time?
Indie | Monday 1st December 2014 | Alice
This year Sky Ferreira released her most controversial album artwork to date. But I have to ask myself, what is so offensive? To some, like iTunes, the album artwork was deemed inappropriate, but I would beg to differ as I cannot overemphasise the over-sexualisation of her breasts. Yes, we as a society have a responsibility to protect the younger generations from inappropriate material but surely this is just outlining how we as society see breasts as sexual. Men have them too, in the form of muscle. Breasts on women only differ in the way they are there for offspring to feed, but this become something overly sexually and therefore prohibited. The RIAA states, “individual record companies and artists decide which of their releases should receive a ‘PAL notice’ indicating that release contains explicit content.”
The word explicit is interesting due to the multiple defintions of the word. The main criteria seem to be: strong language or depictions of violence, sex, or substance abuse. On that note, why do Sky’s breasts fall under the title of sex? Some would argue that the reason society sexualises them is that they are biologically designed to feed offspring, and that itself provides an overwhelming attraction between the father and breasts. Either way it is a natural attraction which shouldn’t be censored. I can understand censoring something that may be deemed harmful to children but the fact is children are exposed to breasts from a young age - there is nothing inherently sexual about them and they are only viewed as sexual when children are taught so.
Ironically Ferreira comments on how it is men who have the most controversial view of the album artwork, “Most of the people who had a problem with [the cover art] were men. At this point, I feel like I’m doing a bad job of being a feminist if I’m not making someone angry. But I’m making art and doing things that are true to my work. I’m not trying to sell my body, but it’s my body to sell if I did want to! This kind of cover isn’t even what sells – what sells is your face, shot by a fashion photographer, but I didn’t want to do something like that. I do that all the time.”
We have begun to censor everything deemed unsuitable but we are the ones creating the unsuitble, by over-sexualising something that is natural and beautiful. I personally say FREE THE NIPPLE and let artwork be artwork.
