i browse the verizon entertainment news from time to time, usually when stuck in traffic on the bus on the way to work.

last friday i made the mistake of reading an article about a girl i’d never heard before, some hudgens or something. apparently she’s done some work for disney. and apparently she let someone (or perhaps did it herself) take nude photos of her. and apparently she’s eighteen. and apparently, inevitably, uptight folks are angry and she’s gone and issued the now-standard apology.

um.

how scared of the human body is our culture, anyway?

In a statement, Disney said it hoped Hudgens had learned a valuable lesson. “Vanessa has apologized for what was obviously a lapse in judgment.”

lapse in judgment? c’mon. who hasn’t had naked pictures taken of themselves at some time or another? (yes, i have, and no, you can’t, unless someone else has put them up online somewhere else in which case if you can find them, yay you.)

and how much of a prude is Renee Rollins-Greenberg?

“She’s damaged,” Renee Rollins-Greenberg, a Los Angeles mother of two, told Reuters. “She’s got this teeny-bop audience, young preteens and younger, who are admiring her and thinking she’s this wonderful, pure innocent person. Eighteen is awfully young for this kind of display.”

eighteen is awfully young? how do you figure, ms. rollins-greenberg? (well, california does seem a tad prudish, what with the age of consent there being eighteen….)¹

but then, those l.a. mothers do seem a rather sensitive sort. just listen to rosie konkel:

“I’m devastated because I have an 8-year-old for which I now have to have an explanation,” said another Los Angeles-area mother, Rosie Konkel. “She’s always looked at this character as a very smart and proper young lady.”

what exactly do you need to explain, ms. konkel? that an adult exercised her free will? that humans have bodies under their clothes? that sometimes asshole ex-boyfriends (or whomever) get their sad little kicks out of posting nude photos of their exes?

c’mon, people. get over it. the last thing we need is to raise the next generation of americans with still more sex-is-dirty and bodies-are-shameful neuroses.

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¹ well, not strictly. the relevant section of the code is as follows:

261.5. (a) Unlawful sexual intercourse is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person who is not the spouse of the perpetrator, if the person is a minor. For the purposes of this section, a “minor” is a person under the age of 18 years and an “adult” is a person who is at least 18 years of age.
     (b) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is not more than three years older or three years younger than the perpetrator, is guilty of a misdemeanor. ed. note: so… a fourteen-year-old who has sex with a seventeen-year-old is guilty of a misdemeanor. come again?
     (c) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison.
     (d) Any person 21 years of age or older who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is under 16 years of age is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years.