Vegas Covers Its Nipples

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Absurd development in the national capital of reckless abandon: County officials in Las Vegas are putting their foot down about some nipples featured in a painted mural decorating the Erotic Heritage Museum. (See the mural here.)

The Las Vegas Sun reports: 

The exposed nipples on portraits of women in the Ho-Down Mural Project violated a county sign code that bans (among other things) the showing of the areola of female breasts, the county says.

After I died laughing, I just had to come back to life and write about this. Clark County maintains that the murals are signs for the neighboring Déjà Vu nude club, and the nipples have now been covered with pasties. What a relief! Now we can all go about our business without having our eyes burned out by areolas.

This is the third mural in recent years to provoke an ironically Puritan hissy fit. Four years ago, a member of the Las Vegas Centennial Committee whined about a mural by Los Angeles artist Alexis Smith that featured an upside-down rendition of the 18th-century Thomas Lawrence painting “Pinkie” covered with the inverted letter “A.” (The Scarlet Letter turned on its head.) The reference to adultery, of all things, was seen as a problem. Adultery! This was right around the time that Las Vegas was riding high on the wildly popular “What happens here stays here” advertising campaign. At that time, Libby Lumpkin, former director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, explained that “people in the community see art as an intellectual retreat from the hyper-sexualized world we live in.”

Meanwhile, back in the hyper-sexualized world we live in, Michelangelo and the creators of erotic frescoes at Pompeii rolled over in their graves. 

The only time I ever went to Las Vegas, I was too young to gamble, but I remember emerging into the sunlight the day after our arrival to find the sidewalks papered with pornographic advertisements. These too featured breasts, with stars printed over the nipples. The fliers rolled down the street like tumbleweeds, blown by the hot desert wind.

Who are you trying to fool, Clark County? When Vegas eventually does go the way of Pompeii, will its erotic heritage, unearthed by archaeologists, be one of covered nipples? Perhaps the conspicuous coverage actually provides more erotic allure than the uncensored version, sort of like when the Victorians covered up the legs of their tables and pianos, concerned that the bare shafts of supportive wood beneath their furniture might turn somebody on.

On a blog at Flavorwire, Kelsey Keith responds by covering up nipples in canonical art images.

Follow Evan James on Twitter.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate