Torso Thursday

A few weeks ago, @smaddenlife and I got into a row argument discussion about the recent trend towards pictures of naked male torsos on posters, book covers, Facebook posts etc.

My view is that it’s all gratuitous and unnecessary. If it’s unacceptable for a nude female torso to be displayed like that, then it should be unacceptable for a male torso too. No need to point out about women having breasts. I’ve spotted that one. The taboo of displaying breasts is a social one (there are societies – like the Pacific island of Yap – where wearing a top is optional and you honestly do stop noticing the boobs after a while).  So, if society demands that ogling Angeline Jolie’s naked chest is wrong (as they should), then ogling Hugh Jackman’s should be wrong too.

Her view (this is still @smaddenlife, in case I’ve lost you with Hugh Jackman… or indeed, Ms Jolie) is that women have been ogled for so long, it’s the men’s turn now.

Given that two wrongs don’t make a right, we eventually arrived at the conclusion that, if this displaying of naked torsos was to be a mark of equality, we should see all kinds of semi-naked torsos. So we decided that we would start a two woman campaign (which sounds better than ‘start mucking around on Twitter playing silly beggars’ – which is what it is really) and call it #TorsoThursday. This is not to be confused with #TorsoTuesday which is about topless men, or that weird lads thing on saturday,which is about topless women. [The other option would have been #ToplessThingies, but we felt that might attract pictures of unwelcome thingies, so #TorsoThursday it is.]

Anyone else fancy joining in? Go photograph something with a torso. A cat, an ant, a pelican crossing with arms… the choice is endless. If you need to photoedit a pair of eyes onto it show us which way is up, that’s okay too.

Post a picture of any non-human torso with the hashtag #torsothursday. It had to be recognisably not human – so a close up of the painting Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies would not count because it could be mistaken for picture a real human. Statues are allowed.

Not long until Thursday. I’d better get snapping.