Why Boys Read National Geographic

I was looking over National Geographic articles/blogs and I came across this one blog about why boys read National Geographic. In the blog the man discusses how he used to go to his grandparents house and head staight for the National Geographic copies that his grandparents owned. He discussed how he used them to learn more about the womans body, but he had wished that they had more pictures of naked white woman. Also maybe if there were more pictures of naked white woman than he may have held them in a higher esteem, and they wouldn't be seen as such a sexual deviant.

When I first read this blog my first reaction was to accuse this guy of being a total pervert. But as a analyzed the blog more I began to understand why young boys looked to National Geographic as an outlet. Yes, it is most definately used for the purpose of masturbations. Yet it also becomes a source of information for boys comeing of age. It provides them with information on a woman's body that they normally would not get in a health class. So really should we encourage this kind of exploration. I'm not exactly sure, but I know that there definitely needs to be some changes in the way our society teaches sex and gender to our adolescent generation in schools.

Another point in the blog that he mentioned was about National Geographic not putting any pictuers of white woman in their magazine. And maybe if they did he would have more respect for the white woman's body. This was another statement I didn't exactly know how to take. Why exactly did this man need a naked picture of a white woman in National Geographic to respect them? On the other hand though we can also wonder why National Geographic doesnt represt the white woman in their magazine more? Is it because they are represented in various other ways or is it that white woman are not as common in third world countries? All these questions are still somewhat a mystery to me. But I was hoping if anyone else viewed my blog they could give their input on the topic? I do agree with the idea that if white women were shown like this woman below they would appear to be as sexually deviant as they do today. It would become more natural than sexual for a white woman to be shown naked in a magazine.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Why Boys Read National Geographic

As I came of age in the 1960s, my older brother and I relished a visit to my grandmother’s house in Westbrook, Maine, since piles of National Geographic were stacked chronologically in her attic. We would disappear into the dusty atelier for hours, poring through the years for photos of naked women; mostly African, Asian, Melanesian, or Amazonian. It was our first exposure to naked women, however neither of us understood why white women were racially unacceptable to the editors of the National Geographic and their exclusion from my early years of sexual awakening meant that the only other source to see naked white women was in stroke books and those women accepted everything. To this day a white woman clothed or naked conjures up a succubus of deviant behavior. Maybe if national geographic had published photos of naked white women on a beach in the South of France I'd hold my females of my racial make-up in higher esteem.

At least sexually!