As someone who spends
the majority of her time in a state of indignation,
I have a surprisingly
high tolerance for things that make other people – albeit,
people I know only
through statistics and Time Magazine blurbs – very mad. I
didnÕt really care about
Janet JacksonÕs boob at the Superbowl, other than the
specific depravity of
her nipple ring; I couldnÕt believe that people were actually
offended to the point of
galvanization.
The kind of outrage
triggered by subversive or accidental allusion to sex (and the
human body in general)
only makes sense to me when I remember a mistake I made
in middle school:
thinking that ÒWelcome to the DollhouseÓ was about dolls, and
watching it with my
parents. I was totally fascinated by the movie, obviously, but
embarrassed for months
afterwards for having seen it with them. ItÕs wasnÕt the content
itself, but being forced
to acknowledge that we could not
acknowledge that kind of
content with one another.
After the movie we just shuffled off, ashamed. ÒOffensiveÓ
things are most
disturbing in the clear demarcation they provide, the white line they
draw around
conversational black holes.
