U.S. libraries and nudity

Everyone who sent me tips about the McLuhan/Playboy issue worried that I probably already had 50 responses. In fact, I only had three (one of which included a PDF of the whole issue of the magazine).

One reader wrote in as follows:

“…but I can assure you that many universities subscribe to Playboy, and many provide document delivery, which means they will send you the article or a pdf of it, no problem, no lecture, no questions asked. Libraries collect all kinds of material sans judgement. I read George Lincoln Rockwell’s autobiography at UCLA special collections and no one blinked.”

True, and any self-respecting American library also carries Mein Kampf (we love our First Amendment; the world’s largest Nazi publisher is in Nebraska, I believe).

And I suppose it makes sense that university libraries would give you whatever you want, no questions asked. Aside from the principle of it, there’s probably plenty of legitimate academic pop culture research going on concerning Penthouse and related topics.

Nonetheless, sex has always played by different rules in America, with its Puritan history. And part of me would have expected American libraries to take a stand against Playboy for both “moral” and “political” reasons. My high school used to censor the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, for instance (it was high school, but still).

It is well known and widely remarked that any amount of violence is OK in American media, but almost no amount of sex. I think it was George Lucas who said: “On American TV, you can cut off a breast, but you can’t kiss it.”