(As a note here, I’m not condoning the art of pornography or any of the factors involved in it – this is more of a discussion about society’s view of sex compared to other things)
If you want to believe everything that Apple says, then boobs are bad. So bad, in fact, that Apple’s attempting to censor them entirely by deleting all the applications in their app store that contain nudity (With the exception of Playboy and Sports Illustrated, of course). Their reason behind it? “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.” Now, I could pull out the standard “Parenting actually requires the parents to pay attention” route on this topic much like I do when parents start whining about violent video games, but instead I want to cover a couple of other points that I feel mentioning.
First of all, censorship is never a good thing because it can never fully be done. People who are looking for this kind of stuff will have other ways of getting it, whether it’s through websites or even through real media. Censoring this kind of stuff doesn’t solve the problem, it just pushes the problem more underground and creates problems there. And plus, what’s next – are you going to create filters so your web browser can’t browse sites with nudity? Or start screening all incoming emails for links or pictures? People will get it no matter what – that’s sadly the fun of the internet.
But more importantly (And this is society in general, not just Apple), of all the things to censor nudity seems like the worst of the big illegal three (Sex, violence, and drugs) to focus on. I’ve always found it ridiculously hypocritical of society to make such a strong case against nudity, yet violent video games have such a low age requirement to buy. To quote George Carlin, “People much wiser than I have said, I’d rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one other.” He’s got it bang on – whether these uptight conservative people like it or not, nudity and sex is a natural event in life. Drugs and violence? Not at all. So why aren’t we targeting those at all? Why doesn’t Apple (And other companies) start banning violence in video games?
I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded and good-natured person, and anything that I don’t want to see on the internet, or even in real life, I’ll intentionally avoid it. But that’s my choice to avoid it – not my friend’s, not my relative’s, and most certainly not Apple’s.