Description of breasts of female sculpture
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Now you see them, now you don’t. TheSun, with a wink at its readers and a jeer at its critics, indulged last week in a bit of traditional British seaside postcard humour when it appeared to stop featuring topless women on Page 3, before bringing them back on Thursday. “Further to reports in all other media outlets, we would like to clarify that this is Page 3 and this is a picture of Nicole, 22, from Bournemouth,” the caption read.
The purpose of these editorial antics seems to have been to underline the newspaper’s daily right to make its own decisions. Yet, whether or not the Sun’s editors wanted to raise the issue, a question had been asked: what do those naked breasts say about the way we see women now?
Down the ages, western culture has laid a strong claim on the female form, repeatedly suggesting that a woman’s body is an eternal ideal of beauty. This was not always the case, however. The classicist Mary Beard points out that, in statuary at least, the most significant parts were once male.
“In sculpture in the ancient world,” Beard said this weekend, “as opposed to painting, where the trajectory is a bit different, male nudity was a symbol of bodily excellence and power, and this goes back to the beginning of Greek sculpture, say in the early 7th century BC.”
The purpose of these editorial antics seems to have been to underline the newspaper’s daily right to make its own decisions. Yet, whether or not the Sun’s editors wanted to raise the issue, a question had been asked: what do those naked breasts say about the way we see women now?
Down the ages, western culture has laid a strong claim on the female form, repeatedly suggesting that a woman’s body is an eternal ideal of beauty. This was not always the case, however. The classicist Mary Beard points out that, in statuary at least, the most significant parts were once male.
“In sculpture in the ancient world,” Beard said this weekend, “as opposed to painting, where the trajectory is a bit different, male nudity was a symbol of bodily excellence and power, and this goes back to the beginning of Greek sculpture, say in the early 7th century BC.”
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