When New York Magazine loaded up the photos for this week’s fashion ‘Military at Ease’ photo story, they didn’t lead with ruffles, choosing a bare bottom instead. The mini feature says that the military trend has ‘staying power’ and we agree.

In commenting on the above photo Village Voice blogger Jen Doll gets in a bare-bottom germ tizzy, which leaves me nothing to say except that it’s a new day at the Village Voice. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix would roll over in their graves, reading the germ talk.

Women As ‘The Thinker’

We agree that the model looks like Rodin’s The Thinker. But rather than worrying about germs, we think she’s pondering the need for women to run the world — or at least have a major say in it — and whether cupcakes and macaroons can bring peace to the Middle East.

Nudity IS everywhere in fashion editorial this spring and not at all to our surprise. Knee-jerk reactions to nudity bring nothing but confusion to the subject because more than one trend is happening at the same time. Sorry, but the subject of nudity expressed in fashion is a far more nuanced topic than bad boy photographer Terry Richardson would have us believe.

Women As Slut Girls or Modern Muses

In our minds, the ‘slut girls’ have achieved nothing but heart ache and disrespect. Taking on conservatives, men in general, and the porn industry, young women saying they would own the name ‘slut’ as Blacks own the name ‘nigger’ has not born positive fruit, from our perspective. (See Women As Muses: What Is Our Place in the Modern World? Or Are We Just ‘Slut Girls’ Today?)

But nudity expressed by embracing the body is another matter. When confronting the conservative, fundamentalist, patriarchal forces in Islam, Catholicism, Jewish and Southern Baptist doctrines, voices pounding away in our psyches that female sexuality is the work of the Devil and a persistent evil temptation to men — enlightened women and men are pushing back by embracing the human body.