The CPSalsa posters are inappropriate, and for the exact opposite reasons that many of the recent letters to the Mustang Daily have ridiculed. The human body is a beautiful thing. It is something that is to be kept healthy and treated well. And the parts of the human body that are so intricately tied to one’s sexuality are also beautiful. It is for this same reason that I was saddened to see the posters during the first week of class. If the human body is God’s finest creation, then how can we approve of it being used in such a cheap and demeaning way – as a mere advertisement. The problem of the posters was not that they showed too much, but that they showed too little. The people in those posters were reduced to a mere assemblage of body parts.
I personally noted how, in most of the posters, the faces of the people were obscured.
The human body is not shown as something valuable, guarded like a treasure.
It is spilled out over campus like cheap water used to was off the sidewalks. The messege the poster sends out is what is devaluing, not the censorship efforts. To say “If you show off your body, you will recieve attention” is a horrible message to send to both women and men.
Similarly, to say “There are people who will show off their bodies, those are who you should pay attention too,” is equally horrible. If these are the messages that are heeded by the people of our society, then any respect due to the human body for its beauty and dignity will not be given. And if no respect is given to the body, then none will be given to the person. The opposite message must be sent. “Your body is beautiful because it is the ‘you’ that I see.” Nothing compliments the jewel of the human body like an appropriate setting of modesty.
Stephen Akers
Mechanical engineering senior