Breasts Front and Center in Body Modesty Debate

Our embrace of our breasts comes in the midst of an international backlash against women’s rights and progress. Men sense the coming changes to their patriarchal reign over women’s lives, and so they humiliate them.

Tomorrow is “Eve Teasing Protection Day” in Bangladesh. It comes as 14 young women have committed suicide in Bangladesh this year over public humiliation. A year later my Sudanese friend Lubna Ahmed Hussein now lives in Paris and speaks out on human rights, especially for women, who continue to be flogged in Sudan.

As our aggressive stance hardens in support of women everywhere, we celebrate the men who are on our side. Jordan Matter has one of the modern, ambiguous names that doesn’t connote gender. Photographer Jordan Matter is a guy, one of many devoted to female-centric values in our world.

NBC’s Meridith Vieira interview and video art segment on Jordan Matter’s book “Uncovered” is a must see video feature.

“Uncovered” Helps Women See True Beauty

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Meredith Viera’s “Uncovered” interview adds richly to our growing conversation around the global need for many men to control a woman’s body. How? By flogging away her sense of self and her dignity, leaving her embarassed, with the equivalent of a scarlet letter around her neck.

Jordan Matter “Uncovered”Jordan Matter “Uncovered”Yesterday, the women of Sudan said ‘enough, our return to the Dark Ages must end’.

Today I’m the Western woman determined to drum up every man and woman I can find on earth to support her, the women of Sudan, and all women caught up in the effort to coerce women backward, by covering them up, arresting them, beating and raping them.

“No Return to the Dark Ages”: Women Protesters Support Lubna in the Sgtreets of KhartoumEnlightened men (and there are millions out there) understand the continuum connecting the ‘trouser girls’ to women like me — and to you, the person reading these words.

As one Middle Eastern man said to me yesterday, “next they will be flogging my daughter.”

Note: Bare breasts ahead, images from “Uncovered”.

Smart Sensuality women understand that sensuality is not only about loving our bodies; it’s about loving nature, healthy food, flowers, poetry and the beauty of human existence. We are dedicated women with heart and a sense of obligation to people in the world.

Jordan Matter “Uncovered”Like one of our leaders Michelle Obama, we are huggers, nurturers and peace makers.

We’re Cultural Creatives — meaning we embrace global values of respect for ethnicity and culture, nature and the environment, sustainability, working hard, love and peace. As Smart Sensuality women, we embrace our bodies and our sexuality and style, too. In fact, we celebrate the totality of who we are as women.

Granted, permissive Western culture often takes the word “modesty” out of the dictionary, a issue that troubles many people, especially more religious ones — and me, too at times. But the need to control women’s bodies does far more harm to women, men and the larger culture, than an occasional breast or two.

Jordan Matter “Uncovered”Men and culture pay a price for flogging women, locking us up and taking away our dignity.

In trying to ‘save civilization’ from the corrupting influence of women, the world loses women’s talent, intelligence and sensitivity.

“Uncovered” is a modern book, an art project concerning women being photographed with bared breasts. But the message of the book, and the interviews with the women photographed, concern women’s self-hatred over our bodies.

That hatred is not natural; it’s imposed on women, who walk the earth fearing arrest and reprimand at the hands of men, who believe that women are vile, corrupting creatures.

For every woman who makes that choice to cover her body as an act of personal liberation there are 10,000, 100,000, or a million more, who hate themselves and their bodies, when they look in the mirror.

These women are the focus of their Smart Sensuality sisters, my focus here at Anne of Carversville.

Jordan Matter “Uncovered”The book “Uncovered” , subject of the thoughtful, perfectly executed and unhurried Meredith Viera “Today” interview is one of the finest pieces of TV, I’ve seen in recent years.