We live in a sick world...

The whole Bill Henson Exhibition issue has erupted just as I've finished reading Dorothy Porter's verse novel, El Dorado, and I realise just how sick some people are.

I am not, however, talking about Bill Henson.

I'm talking about how people are "disgusted" at non-sexual photography artwork. Whether it is good artwork or not is subjective, but his history of critically-acclaimed work would indicate that he is an established artist.

Of course, the centre of the issue is that there are nudes of teenagers.

And, for some reason, teen nudity = child pornography. Now, the police are preparing to slap Mr Henson with criminal charges for obscenity.

Of course, maybe the observer of the artwork needs to take a good long look at themselves. If they find a seemingly-innocuous picture of an adolescent girl to be "disgusting", then they themselves are reading some kind of subtext of sexuality that confronts them. They're assuming that other such people might find these photos titillating and sexually arousing. They're thinking "oh god, that could be my own 13-year old daughter posing naked for any filthy old paedophile to perve on."

Which I think is really sad.

That's like calling Anne Geddes baby photography "child pornography". Or associating Spencer Tunick's many public group nudity photos as "Group Sex" pornography. And maybe we need to also arrest Young & Jackson's hotel for their iconic public nude painting of Chloe. Surely she can't be much older than 14.

Somebody recently asked me why I won't become a children's librarian. I see how the best children's librarians interact with infant children through activities like Storytime and what not. The reality is that if I were to conduct myself in the same manner, with what is essentially playing with small children through song, story and movement, there would be eyebrows raised. People wouldn't trust me. At best, I'd be labelled as dodgy.

And I wonder if there'd be the same kind of demonisation if the photographer had been a woman? Then again, if that were the case, the public would probably instead focus her sexual orientation or her marriage/child status.

And where does it stop? If you can't have non-existant sexuality in adolescent children, then what happens once there's very explicit adolescent sexuality in art? YA Literature is jam-packed full of the stuff! And I read a substantial amount of YA fiction, so what does that make me? A pervert for reading stories about 15-year old girls and who they're going to "lose it" to?


Please grow up, people. It's not *always* about sex. Sometimes nudity is just about personal hygiene, those moments between having a shower and slipping into your jim-jams.