Nipple Me This... Are You Offended By Nipples?

Nipple-negating technology declares war on female breasts

Nipples have become society's latest taboo, much to the chagrin of actresses such as Canada's Pam Anderson , writes Misty Harris

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

CREDIT: Louis Lanzano, The Canadian Press
In an example of the anti-nipple phenomenon, Canadian actress Pamela Anderson complained that network censors ordered her nipples be 'taped down' during filming of her new TV series, Stacked, so as not to offend prime-time audiences.

The good news is those weapons of mass destruction have finally been found.

The bad news is your mother, sister, aunt, and grandma are all guilty of having them.

Sixteen months after the Super Bowl's tempest in a C-cup, war has been declared on women's breasts. From Desperate House-wives' deployment of digital nipple-erasers to Victoria's Secret's nipple-negating bras, a campaign is under way to conceal one of the natural features of the female breast.

The producers of TV's Desperate Housewives have reportedly spent thousands of dollars digitally removing the nipples from on-screen images of actresses Teri Hatcher and Nicolette Sheridan.

In discussing the show's "nipple problem," series creator Marc Cherry tells the Philadelphia Daily News: "Certain actresses really don't like to wear bras. And we try to accommodate them as much as humanly possible. ... So we've done a lot of blurring."

Jeff Jarvis, founder of buzzmachine.com and creator of Entertainment Weekly, jokingly calls it "the nipple clause." As in, "I have the right to have them, you have the right to airbrush them."

A similar situation exists on Canadian actress Pamela Anderson's new TV series, Stacked. In an April interview on Howard Stern's radio show, the actress complained that network censors ordered her nipples be "taped down" during filming so as not to offend prime-time audiences.

"What we have are media executives coming around trying to suggest they should protect us from this, because they're trying to protect themselves," says Mr. Jarvis. "Is there really going to be an outcry? In fact, shouldn't the person who causes that outcry be embarrassed?"

Mr. Jarvis adds: "At some point, I think this becomes a case for the National Organization for Women. Going back to Janet Jackson, when did people's lives get ruined by seeing a breast?"

The bizarre trend isn't limited to celebrity skin.

According to a spokeswoman for Victoria's Secret, one of the biggest complaints from the company's clients was "nipple show-through" in unlined bras. They responded by introducing the much-hyped Ipex, a bra with a contoured pad designed to prevent this problem from arising.

Gary Grizzle, an associate professor of sociology at Florida's Barry University, says the trend represents a shift from a way of thinking in which a woman's ambition, not her sexuality, was considered the greater menace.

"For most of the '80s and '90s, the real threat, as far as women go, had to do with their career aspirations," he recalls. "Normally, we assume that when the focus is on women, they'll be very sexual and very submissive. It's the ones in the three-piece suits that scare the hell out of us."

Mr. Grizzle says current anti-nipple sentiments are steeped in the same notions that cause some religions to keep women covered up and out of holy places because a woman's "sexuality disrupts everything that men try to accomplish."

Radar magazine's Daniel Radosh proposes another possibility. He writes that because "wardrobe malfunctions" have become so commonplace, attitudes toward self-exposing celebrities have become more critical.