Where is the Line: Male Nudity in Nebraska

At 11:20 a.m. on June 14th 2009 a show on ESPN ran a segment that has stirred very little reaction or outrage. In between SportsCenter repeats was a story about to male wrestlers at the University of Nebraska who were dismissed for posing nude on a gay website. As a result of their softcore, that is pictures of just them posing nude not of hardcore sex, they were dismissed from the team. The situational morality of the school, and their fundamentalist Christian/ Republican Congressmen athletic director Tom Osborne, asserts that it is fine to break the law, but two men posing nude is outrageous! The school, which is not forthcoming with information on its reasons for dismissing the students, did state that it was afraid of NCAA sanctions.
Normally a story about two Midwestern wrestlers would seem out of place on a feminist web-site. However, if we look deeper at this case we see the double standard of public sexuality. Susan Bordo, in her book “Male Body Image,” identified that culture only went too far after men started to appear naked. If this was too female wrestlers posing nude in Playboy would their be outrage that they were nude? What if they were dismissed from the team, the media would be all over this story? When Playboy does its’ girls of the Big 12 the nude coeds’ scholarships are not revoked, so why should these men’s scholarships be revoked? The pundit on Outside the Lines said these men made a “bad decision,” but when female Olympic athletes pose nude they are “celebrating their femininity.” The reason feminist should be outraged by the Nebraska story is because by revoking these men’s scholarship the university is ultimately saying that it is okay to objectifying women, but objectifying men is too far. Women are fine to be naked, but if men are posing naked then it is women, or in this case gay men, who are going to look at them and that is obsene! Whether or not it is liberating for women to pose nude is an argument for a different blog, recent literature I’ve read I’m starting to feel that it hurts more than it helps, but what is important is to remember that the fate of men and women are interwoven and this story illustrates that.