Hey, I have a sort of…

Hey, I have a sort of odd question. What do you guys thinking about posting nude baby photos? There are a ton of them on Google search, and they seem totally innocuous. And my parents have a couple of photos of me as a nude toddler that I found hideously embarrassing growing up, but which they had no compunctions about showing to friends and family. But somehow, I feel a little weird posting photos of nude Kavi on the internet. Am I just being paranoid?

Would it make a difference if her genitals (or girly bits, as we tend to actually call them) were covered? Are cute baby buttocks okay? Oh, I am so confused.

This photo, I ended up cropping so her lower body isn't visible. Should I have bothered? It may have been a better photo before.

7 thoughts on “Hey, I have a sort of…”

  1. ask yourself this: If it were a picture you’d taken of a stranger’s child in a park, would you feel comfortable posting it?

  2. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Umm…I don’t think that’s the right question, since I don’t usually see naked babies in parks. I’m more wondering why, since it generally seems socially acceptable to photograph and publish nudes of babies, I’m feeling odd about doing it with Kavi.

    I *think* it’s probably just that the nude has Kavi’s name clearly attached — usually when you see a nude of a baby (whether painting or photograph), it’s an essentially anonymous baby. And obviously, posting them here, people would know it was Kavi. But still, that doesn’t really seem like reason enough to avoid it. If I were a serious photographer, it seems like it’d be a tremendous opportunity to do studies of the human form. No?

  3. I have the same dilema! I usually don’t post pics of River’s bits; there might be one on Flickr that’s restricted to friends and family. I suppose if I had a good one of him that was only tushie, I might go ahead and post it, because, yeah, there’s something just innocent about a baby’s bottom, but it’s possible I’d restrict that one, too.

    I recently had a LOT of people “favorite” one of my breastfeeding photos, and, while I’m sure most of them are just enthusiastic about the baby/ mother bonding through nursing, a couple of them have honestly creeped me out (looking at their profiles and seeing the other kinds of groups they belong to). And, let’s face it, you don’t want to feel creepy about a pic of your baby. So, thinking about that, yeah, I guess I’d refrain.

  4. You know, my mother took all sorts of nude photos of me when I was young. Even sold a negative of one of them to a poster company. (Alas, the image can no longer be found. As much as it embarrassed me when I was younger, at this point in time I’d love to have a copy). But that still feels different than the vastness of the internet to me, somehow.

    I want it to be okay for people to post those sorts of pictures. My first instinct is to post them. I think we (as a country) have ridiculous notions about bodies, and what can and can’t be shown. But I want Kavi to be safe, too, and not used as creep fodder by any sicko out there.

  5. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    I think it really is the internet that’s making me hesitate, which is so odd. I think I would be completely willing to hang a nude baby print in an art show, for example. It’s a shame that the net feels more dangerous, somehow.

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