Banned Butts

Having been an English major and now working in publishing, little gets my blood boiling more than censorship and attempts to ban books. Typically people try to ban books from libraries or schools or bookstores because of the content of the books. Often books are banned because they contain foul language or violence or deal with sensitive themes like sexuality. Although these things might offend some, I don't believe that should be ground to ban the book and keep it out of everyone's hands.

Recently several news sources have been reporting about a new story about a banned book. I stumbled upon the story in the New Yorker. The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon is a novel about Aristotle and Alexander the Great. With Alexander the Great as one of the main characters, you'd think that maybe people want the book banned because there might be a little bit of homosexuality in the story. But that's not why the novel is being banned. BC Ferries, a transportation service in British Columbia Canada, wants the book banned from their shops because of the risque cover.

The cover shows a naked man lying on a horse, and, oh my God, you can see his naked butt! BC Ferries expressed their concern that children might see the cover and that would be a bad thing. This just seems insane to me. Everyone pretty much has the same body parts—though in varying shapes, sizes, and colors—but why is there so much shame associated with the human body? Have people not yet recovered from the shame in that silly Garden of Eden? The cover shows a simple butt. It's just a man's butt, and, in my opinion, there's nothing really pornographic about it. Now if the cover showed a man having sex with someone, then maybe that might be more cause for concern. That's probably something you don't want to leave out for children. But this is just a butt, a butt that apparently needed to be banned from the shelves.

You might want to criticize the Canadians for their prudishness, but here is the cover for the US edition of the same book. It is completely different and there isn't any nakedness at all. There is a bare chest but all of the private parts are properly covered. But there is blood. Blood is OK. We don't need to shield children from blood.

Needless to say, I hope the folks at BC Ferries never see an ancient Greek statue. There are naked butts everywhere. There are even naked boobs and penises.