I feel compelled to respond to the question Russell Allsup posed in his opinion piece on Wednesday. Should we lighten up with regard to the Playboy situation? In a word, yes. For anyone who may have somehow avoided the related ads and articles, Playboy came to Dallas recently to recruit models from the SMU student body.
The ensuing debate has been almost as intense as the one brought on after some ignorant homophobe defiled Professor Henson’s door last semester. Russell (with whom I share a name, meaning “red-haired” or “fox-like”) reminds us that any manifestation of pornography will inevitably lead to pedophilia.
Wait…what? Forgive me if I can’t quite grasp how reading (staring at, whatever) Playboy is going to turn me into a Foley-esque Cub Scout chaser. It seems very Jekyll & Hyde meets Peter Pan to me. It’s a pretty presumptuous leap to make. “I’m going to be a boy forever!” “Jackpot. Want to see my lab?” I think that if Hugh Hefner knew that his publication was breeding a society of pedophiles and rapists, he would be more ashamed than a Baptist who had accidentally seen a nipple before marriage. Now I’m not saying that posing for Playboy is necessarily something I’d want my sister or imaginary girlfriend to do, but I think that throwing the Ten Commandments at the students who did choose to do so is a bit extreme. Because those stone tablets are heavy.
Furthermore, the Bambi example he presented was flimsy at best. The fact that the number of dead deer decreased from one year to the next 60 years ago does not prove how Playboy begets pedophilia. Stop and consider that maybe the drop in the number of deer-tag sales had nothing to do with the fact that Bambi’s mom couldn’t outrun a bullet, but rather that many of our skilled marksmen were overseas using their brand new Nazi hunting licenses. Just a thought.
On top of that, it just doesn’t make any sense. Allsup said that a pedophile begins his perverted obsession by looking at magazines like Playboy and from there continues on a downward spiral into twisted lechery. Wrong. Pedophilia is, as the American Psychiatric Association will tell you, a mental illness. Finding women attractive is not.
He also says that “nakedness and sex are to be enjoyed” with which I couldn’t agree more. But I don’t need someone telling me when or how I can enjoy it. That would have made freshman year even more frustrating.
Allsup says that it is our responsibility to judge what we as a society deem to be morally reprehensible, but his interpretation of that is pretty distorted. Judge me if you’d like. I took $50 from my dad’s wallet when I was 15, smoked pot from time to time in high school, and currently spend a good bit of time playing on Facebook when I’m at work. So go ahead, damn me.
But if a handful of our fellow students want to take some pictures for Playboy, who cares? It’s certainly not worth bashing them with Bibles over. A few pictures of breasts will not lead us into an amoral apocalyptic anarchy, so yes, let’s lighten up.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go shower with my bathing suit on and feel guilty about it.
Relax, people. After all, this isn’t Baylor.
About the writer:
Russ Lindell is a senior International Studies and Latin American Studies major. He can be reached at [email protected].
