Nudity and Children

There is really nothing more innocent than a naked baby. In fact, any child up to about the age of 10 should be able to be naked and free before the accumulated guilts of society begin to take hold. So it is truly disturbing that a New Zealand mother was taken to task for changing her 16-month old daughter in the open at a public swimming pool. The reasons for the ban on child nudity? "...some swimmers were offended by child nudity and they were also worried about the risk of paedophiles photographing naked children."

Oh, please. The mother got angry, and rightly so, over the completely ridiculous policy. At least the incident has opened a national debate in NZ over the overly-politically correct stance at the pool. The manager of another pool said, "Unless there were other circumstances surrounding what happened, I would say it's political correctness gone mad. Maybe if it was a 16-year-old getting changed it would be different, but not a 16-month-old. It's an overreaction."

In another incident, a woman took some naked pictures of her little children on a camping trip and her life became a living Hell when an overzealous drug store employee turned her into the police for the "questionable" photos. Pedophilia is a real problem in our society, but criminalizing the bodies of children is not a solution.

UPDATE: Readers respond overwhelmingly against the extreme political correctness of the pool's ban on naked children.