Censorship of Sexual and Erotic Material

Installment C:
The long history of erotic shame, one body part at a time

Introduction
Eroticism is never just about biology. It’s a product of power, culture, and shifting rules about what’s allowed to be seen. Across history, different societies have sexualized, exalted, or concealed certain parts of the body—each choice revealing deeper views on desire, control, and exposure.
This essay tracks how meaning gets mapped onto flesh. First the female body, then the male, and finally, the parts that no longer belong to one category at all.
These aren’t just stories of attraction. They’re stories of regulation—and what gets lost when desire is edited out.

The Female Body
How specific parts of women’s bodies were marked, shaped, and sexualized across cultures
 
What people consider attractive isn’t universal. It changes depending on where you are and when you’re living. Across cultures, different body parts have been singled out to represent beauty, status, or sexual appeal. In some places it was lips. In others, it was feet. Sometimes the focus was on something rarely exposed—just a glimpse of skin or shape that carried meaning.
Women’s bodies, in particular, have often been the center of this attention. Not because they are inherently more sexual, but because social power has positioned them that way. They’ve been watched more closely, judged more harshly, and used more often to represent what a culture values—or wants to control.
This section explores how certain parts of the female body became charged with meaning, and what that reveals about the times and places that shaped those ideas.
 
The Nape of the Neck – Japan
Edo Period (1603–1868)
In Japan during the Edo period, modesty became erotic strategy. The nape of the neck, or unaji, was often left bare against a powdered face and tightly coiled hair. It was a whisper of skin in a society that didn’t shout. A place you weren’t supposed to look, which of course made it irresistible.
 
 
Feet – China
Tang Dynasty (618–907) to Early 20th Century
Foot-binding didn’t just reshape the body—it reshaped desire. The tiny, broken arch of the lotus foot became a symbol of class, femininity, and sexual allure. Pain was transformed into status, and control was disguised as beauty. It was also believed that women with bound feet moved in a way that strengthened their vaginal muscles, adding to their sexual appeal. And for centuries, it worked. The practice wasn’t officially banned until the 20th century.

 
Lips – Global Influence
Ancient Persia (~500 BCE) to Present
Women have used lip color for thousands of years. In ancient Persia, they used crushed minerals to dye their lips. In Greece, red lips were linked to sex workers. In the 1900s, red lipstick became popular in Hollywood and is still seen as a symbol of boldness and sexuality.
 
Waist – Victorian England
Victorian Era (1837–1901)
In 19th-century England, many women wore corsets to make their waists look small. A tight waist was seen as elegant and attractive. Corsets also showed a woman’s class and self-control. They weren’t just about fashion—they carried a message about how women were supposed to act.
 
 
 
Eyes and Gaze – Middle East
Medieval Islamic Period (~7th century–Present)
The veil didn’t hide everything. It focused attention. Eyes became everything: the place seduction lived. Lined with kohl, partially hidden, they weren’t passive—they were provocative. Desire slipped through the narrowest openings and changed the whole room. The gaze—a simple glance—could be powerful and full of meaning.
 
Elongated Necks – Kayan People (Thailand & Myanmar)
Circa 11th Century–Present
Among the Kayan people, necks are stretched with brass rings not to deform but to define. Beauty here is about grace, identity, and endurance.  It’s also a sign of tradition and identity.
 

 
Hands and Wrists – Victorian England & Middle East
Victorian Era & Ancient Middle Eastern Traditions (~2000 BCE–Present)
In Victorian England, the simple act of removing a glove could read like a confession. Meanwhile, in Middle Eastern cultures, henna transformed hands into something ceremonial and sensual. These weren’t just hands. They were stories written in dye and ritual.
 
Stomachs – India
Ancient India (~2000 BCE–Present)
In India, the midriff was never shy. It showed up on goddesses, dancers, and everyday women wearing saris. It wasn’t hidden or sexualized—it was sacred. The stomach wasn’t a flaw to cover. It was a center to honor.
 
Buttocks – Khoisan People (Southern Africa)
Prehistoric Times (~Before 10,000 BCE)–Present
Long before Western culture caught up with curves, the Khoisan people were celebrating them. Steatopygia—fullness in the buttocks—was seen as a sign of beauty, health, and fertility. It wasn’t fetish. It was form. And it was revered.
 
Scarification – Sub-Saharan Africa
Neolithic Period (~8000 BCE–Present)
In many African cultures, the body becomes a canvas. Scars don’t hide pain—they reveal power. Lines carved into skin during rites of passage tell stories of survival, status, and sensuality. The marks weren’t just seen. They were read.
  
Tattoos – Polynesia, Maori, and Japan
Polynesia & Maori: ~2000 BCE–Present | Japan: Edo Period (1603–1868)
Tattoos for women weren’t about rebellion. They were about readiness—marking adulthood, strength, and social role. In Maori culture and parts of Polynesia, women had tattoos on the lips, thighs, or hands. In Edo Japan, courtesans wore their ink like identity. These weren’t random designs. They were claims staked in skin.
 
Teeth – Africa and Japan
Africa (~2000 BCE–Present) & Japan: Heian Period (794–1185)
In West Africa, a gap between the front teeth has long been seen as a sign of charm and beauty. In Japan, some women dyed their teeth black during the Heian period. This showed maturity and commitment, especially within marriage.
 
The Small of the Back – Korea
Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897)
In traditional Korean clothing, most of the body was covered. The small of the back was rarely seen, but when it was, it became a quiet focus of attention. Some art and literature from the time shows how even a small amount of visible skin could suggest attraction.
 
Lingerie – Western Cultures
Late 19th Century–Present
Lingerie began as armor—tight, structured, hidden. Corsets laced the waist, bras shaped the bust, girdles held everything in place. But the meaning wasn’t just physical; it was moral. A disciplined body implied a disciplined woman. As modesty codes relaxed, lingerie moved from utility to allure. It began to show. Lace and satin edged into view. In the 20th century, it became performance—on pin-ups, in ads, and later, on runways and music videos. No longer just hidden underclothes, lingerie became an invitation—or a refusal—depending on who wore it and why.
 
To Be Continued in Part 2:
The female body has often been the focus of attention, but the male body has its own history—marked by strength, control, and a different kind of expectation.

When the Body Was Divine

Installment B of the Essay Series

When the Body Was Devine

There was a time when the nude body wasn’t scandalous.
It wasn’t blurred, flagged, or covered in fig leaves.
It was divine.

Across ancient cultures, the exposed human form was revered. Nudity wasn’t an invitation to look away—it was an invitation to look deeper. Statues stood naked in temples. Lovers and deities adorned the walls of shrines. And no one called it pornographic.

In early Mesopotamia and Egypt, gods and kings were sculpted with idealized bodies—torsos bared, phalluses proud, hips soft and strong. These weren’t airbrushed fantasies. They were sacred representations of power and presence. In Greece, athletes competed nude, and philosophers debated beauty like it was a spiritual principle. The naked form was considered closer to the truth.

In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, erotic carvings weren’t tucked in back corners of temples—they were carved right into the front doors. Visitors entered through imagery that we, today, would likely tag as explicit. But there, these figures were teachings. Desire wasn’t a detour on the spiritual path—it was part of it.

The same goes for ancient fertility icons—like the Venus of Willendorf or thecSheela-na-gig—figures with generous thighs, exposed genitals, and wide, unapologetic eyes. In their time, they were symbols of life and abundance. Today, they’d likely be pixelated—or banned altogether.

Venus of Willendorf

Sheela-na-gig

So what happened?

As Christianity took root—especially in the West—the body lost its sanctity. Slowly, reverence gave way to restriction. Nudity became dangerous. Pleasure became suspect. The naked body? A liability. A threat. A thing to cover.

The early Church didn’t just rewrite theology. It reshaped how people viewed their own bodies. A naked figure once considered sacred became something to hide. Something to judge. Something to feel guilty about.

By the Middle Ages, robes and loincloths had been painted across religious art. Nudity still appeared, but now it needed a narrative: suffering, shame, sin. Even during the Renaissance, with its revival of classical ideals, tension remained. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment originally featured a sea of unapologetic nudes. After his death, the Church ordered the genitals covered. The man hired for the job, Daniele da Volterra, became known as Il Braghettone—“The Breeches Maker.”

Michelangelo’s Last Judgment

Centuries later, Pope John Paul II would call for the restoration of many of those same nudes. He emphasized the importance of distinguishing between the ethos of the image—the artist’s intention—and the ethos of the viewer—what the audience brings to it. A rare moment of official reclamation. But by then, shame had already rooted itself in the folds of fabric, in the downward gaze, in the reflex to look away before desire gives us away.

Fast-forward to Picasso’s Minotaur and Woman.

If you ever want to watch someone squirm in an art museum, show them this painting.
Half-man, half-bull, fully erect—mythically and metaphorically—the Minotaur looms over a nude woman in a pose that’s equal parts sensual and unsettling. Is it desire? Domination? A dream? A threat? The image won’t let you settle into one answer. That’s part of its charge.

Some see mythology. Others see violence. Some whisper “pornography” and look away. It’s not just how we look—it’s what shame has taught us to see.

We now live in a culture where nudity in art must defend itself. The sacred nudity of ancient times has become the oxymoron of modern life. We’ve inherited a discomfort that wasn’t always there—and drag it into dressing rooms, relationships, and intimacy.

We’re not just censoring what we see. We’re censoring how we feel.

Censorship isn’t just something that happens to art. It happens to us.
We don’t just blur bodies—we blur the permission to enjoy them.
We second-guess attraction.
We hesitate in pleasure.
We edit our impulses mid-sensation.

This isn’t just a cultural hangover. It’s a private echo chamber. One that gets especially loud when we start to feel good. Because here’s the next layer of shame—one that doesn’t get talked about enough: the shame of receiving pleasure.

Not just expressing desire—but letting it in.
Letting it happen.
Staying with it.

For many—especially those raised in conservative, religious, or sexually repressed households, pleasure itself can feel like a betrayal. A sign of weakness. A moral failure. We were taught to feel guilty not just for what we want—but for what we enjoy. 

That guilt doesn’t vanish with age. It follows us. It walks into the bedroom with us. It lies beside us in the dark. It’s there when we hesitate to undress. When we apologize for wanting. When we don’t ask for more—even when we ache for it.

Eventually, we stop needing anyone to silence us.
We do it ourselves.

We ration joy.
We dilute intimacy.
We trade honest sensation for curated performance.

So we grow up and discover not just shame in wanting—but shame in accepting. Not just shame in being seen—but shame in being touched, in being held, in being moved. The shame of letting something good actually reach us.

That’s what censorship does. It doesn’t just restrict images. It builds emotional firewalls between the viewer and the viewed. Between the body and the experience of living in it. Between the eye and the permission to feel.

We forget that nudity was once a form of reverence. That pleasure was once sacred. That desire was once seen as a sign—not of sin—but of life.

This isn’t just about censorship in the gallery. It’s about what we bring to bed. What we carry into relationships. What we pass on to the next generation when we don’t question where the shame came from.

When did the human body become NSFW?

When Images Become Dangerous

Installment A of the Essay Series

Installment A of the Essay Series

We live in a time when explicit content is everywhere. But linger too long on the wrong kind of naked body, and suddenly you’re not just a viewer—you’re a voyeur. You’ve crossed some invisible line. You’ve reacted. You’ve felt something. And that, apparently, is the problem, the danger.

This series explores the blurry, combustible territory where art, desire, censorship, and labeling collide.

It’s about erotica. It’s about pornography.

It’s about the people—religious, political, algorithmic—who still believe they have the right to decide what the rest of us are allowed to see.

It’s also about the baggage we inherit—usually without realizing it—that shapes how we see the naked body.

And the shame doesn’t stop at the museum doors. It follows us home. It distorts how we see our own bodies—what we show, what we hide, what we tolerate in ourselves and others. Eventually, it finds its way into the bedroom, where it silences desires, blunts pleasure, and teaches us to second-guess what we want.

And it’s not just theoretical. These judgments show up in real moments – in galleries, in glances, in the flicker of reaction we try to hide.

If you’ve ever stood in front of a painting and thought, “How would I categorize this?”, this essay is for you. Maybe you weren’t sure if it was erotic or pornographic. Maybe you looked around to see if anyone noticed your reaction—only to realize you were the only one standing there. The others had kept their distance. Not because they didn’t see it. But because they didn’t want to be seen seeing it.

The discomfort isn’t only in the image—which might not even be explicit, as the one below shows. It’s in the fear of being caught responding. These kinds of images stir something: curiosity, confusion, unease. But the reaction isn’t just about the artwork.

It’s about the programming behind the gaze.

That’s how shame takes root: quietly, and often without question.

Sometimes the image isn’t even of a body.

Take Edward Weston’s “Pepper No. 30”—a black-and-white photograph of a curled bell pepper, elegantly lit and deeply suggestive. At a glance, it’s just a vegetable. But to many viewers, it suggests curves, creases, softness. Something sensual. Weston never intended it that way. But interpretation doesn’t come from the pepper. It comes from us.

The arousal isn’t in the object. It’s in the projection.

This is where perception becomes revelation.

We respond not just to what we see—but to what we’ve been conditioned to see. Conditioned by religion, media, school, family, culture. And that conditioning? It’s not neutral. It drags in shame, silence, bias, and desire—and ties them in a bow we’re supposed to call “appropriate.”

Carl Jung believed that images speak directly to the unconscious. They don’t just reflect the world—we bring the world to them. Inside us are archetypes: the mother, the lover, the shadow, the sinner. These embedded patterns shape what we see and how we feel when we see it. A photograph might stir something unexpected not because of its content, but because it touches something primal within the viewer.

That’s why the same image can be seen as erotic, offensive, or meaningless—depending not just on the viewer, but on the conditioning they carry with them.

And biologically, we’re built to feel it. Visuals aren’t decoration—they’re hardwired into how we process the world. Researchers estimate 30–50% of our brain is devoted to visual processing. Perkins School for the Blind

More than for touch. More than for hearing. More than for language. The visual doesn’t just matter—it dominates.

That’s why images are often the first thing to be censored.

They reach us before reason. They short-circuit the filters. They slip under the surface and touch something we didn’t plan on revealing.

Religious authorities once painted robes over nude frescoes. Today, we let algorithms decide what’s “too much.” They blur nipples, ban intimacy, and pretend it’s about morality—not marketability.

The tools have changed. The instinct hasn’t.

Control the image, and you control the feeling.

Censorship doesn’t just hide content. It rewrites meaning. It tells us what not to feel. It reshapes how we see nudity, desire, gender, power. It whispers, “You’re being watched.” And worse: “You should be ashamed of what you feel.”

Even inside churches and sacred spaces, the image has always been contested. In Sacred Art or Pornography?, Simon Carrington writes about his surprise at seeing bare-breasted allegories of love and chastity throughout St. Peter’s Basilica—nude, unapologetic, and exalted.

Pope John Paul II, in reflecting on this tension, introduced a distinction that still matters:

There’s the ethos of the image—what the artist intends.

And the **ethos of the viewer**—what we bring to it.

A painting might honor the beauty of the body. But even that can be seen as obscene—depending on how deeply the viewer has been trained to mistrust their own gaze.

So before we ask, “What is this image?”

We might ask, “What shaped the way I feel about this image?”

That’s the heart of this series: how visual art, nudity, desire, censorship, and shame intersect.

We’ll look at cultures that once revered the naked body. How we got from that to content warnings and Not Safe for Work tags.

We’ll track how visual discomfort gets weaponized—and what that does to our sexuality, our relationships, and our ability to live in our own skin.

And we’ll return often to the viewer.

To you.

Because in the end, this series isn’t just about what we see.

It’s about what we’ve been told not to feel—and what it might mean to feel anyway.

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Send your experiences with censorship to susanamayer3@gmail.com, place censorship in subject line. Indicate whether you wish to remain anonymous or provide a name/pseudonym to be credited.