So SFist likes our cover this week. I haven’t heard any complaints yet, but we’ll get some. And they’ll be utterly predictable: Why are there penises on the front page, right out there (as my mother used to say) in front of God and everyone?
Here’s the thing: I’ve been doing this a long time, and we’ve put a lot of naked people on the cover (nude beaches, sex issue, random stories about public nakedness) — and when it’s just women, nobody peeps. Full frontal, whatever — it seems in our society that it’s perfectly okay to show the unclothed female body. But not a dick. God, not a dick.
I’ve often wondered why a movie that shows tits and (female) asses can get away with a PG-13 rating and even full-frontal female, and lots of it, only gets you an R. But a single glimpse of a male organ, even in its unaroused state, automatically turns a movie into NC-17.
What, are penises really that scary? Or are most of the censors guys who have, you know, issues?’