CHILD nudity in books such as The Day My Bum Went Psycho and the Gumnut series show society has little to worry about despite a political battleground suggesting otherwise, says a Deakin University children’s media expert.
Lecturer Leonie Rutherford has pooh-poohed critics of a French book “Tous a poil!” (Everyone Get naked!), taking a swipe at conservative columnist Piers Akerman in the process, in an essay detailing the role of schools, parents, religious bodies and others checking what kids can and can’t read.
Ms Rutherford, writing on the academic website The Conversation, said nudity in children’s literature was a “flash-point because it triggers debates about how knowledge of sexuality should be regulated”.
“Where, to whom, and in what contexts should sexual behaviour be expressed?” she asked.
“How much should children be told about their bodies and their various capabilities?”
Ms Rutherford said exposing children to frank discussions of sexual functioning and the range of adult sexual behaviour remained contentious although the comic licence afforded Andy Griffiths’ Bum series and the sentimental mode of May Gibbs’ Gumnut babies assisted a less hostile reception to child nudity.
“Pictures have greater power than words – at least to shock us, it seems,” she said.
“Until the late 20th century, fiction for adolescents was generally evasive about sexuality. Explicit depiction of bodily engagement in sexual activity remains less common than more reticent romance.”
Ms Rutherford likened writer Akerman’s slap at the ABC Peppa Pig for a “weird feminist line” to attacks on “Tous a poil!” and lining up “opposing views of which gender and family identities should be promoted”.
Adolescent sexuality and schools has come under local controversy in recent weeks when sexually explicit Biblezines were handed out to sixth-grade children. Students at Torquay College received booklets claiming masturbation and homosexuality were sinful and that revealing clothes invited sexual assault after graduating from an Access Ministries Christian education program last year.
