Double Flee A

babies: almost perfect

The longer I live, the more I notice how much denial (almost) everyone around me is in. And if there's one thing I like to do, it's to put an end to that denial.

For example, people assume that god exists a lot, and sometimes insist that they're right about this, without actually realizing that they can't 1) have an irrational faith in something and 2) justify it in reality. That these two things are incompatible is as simple, straightforward, and sensible an idea as it can possibly be. I proudly hang up my Christian-venom-spattered coat in reality gardens each night, having done my part to make it clear that you can't have it both ways. A denizen of the real world, Dale takes no vacations to sugar candy mountain, heaven, where everybody's pious great-grandmother's "glorified body" wanders the streets made of gold, some other heaven, where some dumb-ass brainwashed ex-suicide bomber kid fucks seventy virgins for ever and ever, or any other fantasy land. I enjoy pushing people around on this point, because it's really easy and fun. I expect this pastime will bring me pleasure indefinitely. While it's unclear to me (as would be expected in the vast nonlinear causality field that is culture) what purpose it serves others to show that their denial exists, I think it's contributing to a more aware world. And that's all I can really hope for. The more people know, the better off we'll all be.

Another great denial is that people are animals. There are various shades of this, and cataloging them all would take more time than I have, but tonight I'm going to focus on one Anne Geddes, darling of persons-in-denial that babies have genitals.

A human baby is born very immature. One of the great evolutionary advantages of post-gestative development is the luxury of time, which anyone who's ever babysat a toddler knows they deperately need. A baby horse has to get up and walk right away or else it's deselected for reproduction when something else in nature with sharp teeth eats it. A human baby, on the other hand, has almost endless time to crap all over the place, cry and scream for stuff it wants, and so on. The baby-ism goes on for many years. People get accustomed to children being baby-like, with their naivete and so on, and are quite reluctant to give them over their own identities where sexuality is concerned. That's reserved for later on, and that's fine. I'm not about to tackle when a person should be brought into the mostly un-spectacular un-secret that --guess what-- sex makes more people. Everybody gets a crack at it, even them, one of these days.

In her photography, the genitals of Anne Geddes' subjects, babies, are very conspicuously absent. It's not that she's a bad photographer, she just chooses to lie with her pictures, and she, like many other liars who make dippy people's brains feel all snuggly and familiar (Hannity, ete cetera), has been rewarded by the marketplace, with millions and millions of dollars. People don't want to think about babies having sex organs. It makes them all squirmy-urmy. And when you want a picture taken that will make you feel good about your choice to --alter, maim, augment, rearrange, omit, whitewash-- a child's natural image, she's your girl. Anne Geddes, with the approval of people all over America, has made it safe to smile at photographs of naked children, at an eventual expense none among us can reasonably estimate, except that it's probably not very good.

I exaggerate to make a point; which of these two pictures is more dishonest?

Baby, the Anne Geddes way:


Or, baby with a great big ol' johnson:


Why is it that we are stuck with a baby-like image instead of a real one?

Easy. Office ladies just wouldn't feel like tickling that second one. Penises are yucky on babies too.

posted by dale @ 11:46 PM