To the Concerned Parents and Educators of Today’s Youth,

America is diseased. This infirmity of culture is more damaging than Ebola, AIDs, and the Black Plague combined; the menace is nudity. While I fully support the implementation of violence and sexual imagery in our entertainment culture, nudity is right to be scourged and ignored.

In major television, it is fully acceptable to hack off limbs and split heads. In fact, in the Walking Dead on AMC, family entertainment is immortalized through guts and brains being spilt and splattered. Carnage and constant defiling of diseased flesh will always be accepted with open arms as long as nothing in the bathing suit area is shown. If anything so much as a rotting zombie nipple descends on viewer’s eyes, that show will rightfully, automatically be morally incorrect. Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court Justice, completely agrees that the modern industry status is to rate and censor media only if the content is sexual or includes nudity (Clark-Flory par. 3). There is “little difference in the amount of violence between PG-13 and R-rated movies,” and nudity and sexual intercourse is the defining factor on censorship (“Study shows US film ratings barely distinguish between levels of violence” par. 4). This system has been firmly lodged into place since the beginning of America’s entertainment culture, and as an example to the rest of the world, America must keep promoting this healthful focus on violence and continue to create a stigma on the seemingly commonplace body. The public’s eyes should absolutely never be subjected to an appendage that they might have. What if one had never before seen a nipple? This zombie nipple might send the viewer into a crazed frenzy.

As Dirk from YahooAnswers states, sexual imagery is rife in American Culture. He assents that “there is no getting away from it. Movies, TV, ads, magazines, billboards, internet, social media, sex education in public school, some nude beaches, sex shops, [and] sex clubs” are all plainly in our culture (Yahoo!Answers). The defining factor in appropriateness is not in the ample cleavage with bare coverings or the rear end scantily clad in daisy dukes while the offending mannequin holds an uzi, but the tiniest dip into the genital and nipple area. This societal attitude of documenting, judging, and censoring the naked body is a constant affair in American Culture (“Liberal Englishman: Nudity In U.S. Media Is Bad, But Violence Totally OK? WTF!” par. 6). Children especially are shielded from this menace, and may the universe forbid that they ever learn what a mature, human body looks like before puberty. They do not need to develop a tolerance to the naked body before embarking on adulthood, and this cycle of mystifying the natural body perfectly allows for the current trend of hormone-ridden males and females forcefully exacting sexual information from one another. Putting the media-enforced image of the “perfect” human body with large boobs, butt, and the occasional six pack is the one of the healthiest options for emotional and mental health as long as no genitals are splayed for everyone to see. 

Not everyone’s curiosity is satiated from this display of teasing skin, and to rectify this situation, I believe we must follow closely our neighbors’ ideals. Modern technology allows for fabric that cannot be seen through, yet is airy enough to be worn comfortably. In order to prevent young minds from being enraptured by their own bodies, we should cover them, ankles and all just as the Islamic Extremist group, ISIS does. Even with our daughters’ constant subjugation to images of imagined perfection, they still descend into depression and insecurity. To promote female empowerment and a respect for women as equals, we should institute female brigades patrolling the streets to hunt down any scraps of skin naked to be seen by all. Any view of the body is corruptible, and instead of taking the time to educate the youth, it would be far easier to continue promoting violence in these street gangs and continuing to mystify the body. This action of females rooting out other females and beating them if immorally showing anything more than the dreaded ankles is described as the beginning of the “female emancipation” of the ISIS movement, and America’s sons and daughters would benefit from such a censorship.

American entertainment culture acts as a beacon to the rest of the world. As art imitates life, we can all see that the violence, gore, and mutilation of the human body is widely more accepted than merely showing all of it. Ratings systems and age limits placed on certain movies, video games, or tv shows reflect the ongoing stigma related to the human form, and this unhealthy focus on concealing instead of educating leads to rape culture and the dour state of the youth’s self confidence in their body image, currently. When American Culture is already rife with sexual symbols leaving more to the imagination than is actually there, why do we not take the extra step and accept our natural selves rather than feeling embarrassed for being built this way? As there is no sound answer, the practice should cease.

Stop the stigma.

With hope,
Unhealthily Mystified Teenager Ashley 

 
Works Cited
Clark-Flory, Tracy.  “Court reaffirms: Sex much worse than violence” Salon. Salon Media Group, 30 June 2011. Web. 9 February 2015.
 Dirk. “Re: Why are sex and nudity seen as bad in America but violence is just fine?” answers.yahoo, Yahoo, June 2014. Web. 9 February 2015.
Gilsinian, Kathy. “The ISIS Crackdown on Women, by Women” theatlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 15 July 2014. Web. 9 February 2015.
“Study shows US film ratings barely distinguish between levels of violence” theguardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 9 December 2013. Web. 9 February 2015.
Wallace, Shaun. “Liberal Englishman: Nudity In U.S. Media is Bad, But Violence Totally OK? WTF!” liberalamerica. Liberal America. 13 August  2014. Web. 9 February 2015.