By Travis Danner
If you look at any magazine rack in just about any grocery store, you will see scantily clad women. You will see big, bold enticing headlines like “19 ways to please your man!” If someone had gone up to those counters, taken two dozen magazines off of the rack and dumped them into the trash outside, that person would be arrested.
This scenario occurred.
Wednesday at Las Positas College when a student took 23 copies of Naked Magazine off the racks on campus and dumped them into recycling bins. This is a bra- zen attack on free expression at worst and the disturbed work of repressed and misogynistic body- shaming at really worst.
The person who stole copies of Naked 9 even gave a written con- fession in which he stated he was being “subjegated(sic) to pictures of a morbidly obese woman with her disgustingly gross fat hanging out everywhere” and would be “promptly recycling (the maga- zines) until something is done.”
He also wrote that the photos were “borderline pornography” but also “not even good porn.” So if it was “good porn” would the magazines have been destroyed? My guess is probably not.
That he put these photos in the same context as porn must mean he feels some shame about his own reaction to them. Perhaps he should take a copy home to work out his feelings about it.
But really, there’s a lot of shame to go around in this situation.
Shame on campus security for, at first reaction, not taking this criminal offense seriously. If their property was stolen from cam- pus, I’m sure their reaction would be markedly different. Shame on them for making this campus feel like an unsafe environment for student journalists and for free expression.
Shame on Livermore PD for coming up with some arbitrary number for how many magazines need to be stolen before they’ll take this action seriously.
Mostly though, shame on this
gutless coward who can’t handle a world that doesn’t conform to his every standard to the point he has to try to destroy other people’s hard work. Good luck in the real world, hypocrite.
Oscar Wilde once wrote that “the books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
I could not be prouder of the staff of Naked 9 for the hard work and dedication they showed to making Naked 9 a reality or the beautiful woman brave enough to pose for these photos to show how proud she is of her body. This coward has stolen time from you all.
Unfortunately for him, those magazines carry a dollar value. He should probably think twice the next time he tries to censor Naked Magazine.
