“Smith Titties” Reclaims Nothing

Women's bodies are a source of timeless fascination, almost culturally clichéd in their status as something to be Looked At. The process of reclaming the female body is difficult. Because women's bodies are a source of shame and fascination, we want to reclaim them.

We reclaim our bodies in words – think of Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" – and we reclaim them in consensual photographic exhibits such as Sexhibition or MISC's Identity Project. With this fascination, and reclamation, however, comes the tendency to simplify and oversexualize: namely, using slang terms like "titties" and mistaking disembodied, amateur porn for empowerment. This is why I am livid at the sight of posters for Smith Titties, a tumblr blog created to showcase "your beautiful Smith bodies."

Smithies have been getting naked for a long time. Until 1969, first-years on arrival had to strip nude for "posture pictures," a humiliating and supposedly scientific ritual that Susan Allen Toth describes in her memoir Ivy Days. Amherst and Harvard students routinely stole these pictures, and Smithies had no way of getting them back. We've updated the routine now to stripping down at Convocation, where, we are warned, cameras flash and bystanders ogle. This, however, is different.

Common sense dictates not to put naked pictures of oneself on the Internet. I'm not slut-shaming, I'm repeating one of the basic laws of the information age – don't text, tweet or tumblr your nudie pics. Surely Anthony Weiner's scandal earlier this year taught us that. I know the urge to be famous, even anonymously, is tempting. In a post-patriarchal world, pictures of breasts would be just that: pictures of a body part.

Even so, porn exists, and so does the drooling, shame, fear and jerking off associated with it. Pictures of breasts are not just pictures of breasts, but culturally laden artifacts that have power in the hands of someone else. I abide by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it." Business sense dictates that if you're going to get naked on camera, at least get paid for it, and know who's taking the pictures.

When I contacted them for an interview, the proprietors of Smith Titties initially agreed, then backed out, so there's no way to know that they're not amateur fetishists in Northampton.

Even if they are Smithies, the owners of the site don't really matter. Their anonymity, and the fact that we don't know if they're selling pictures, does. All too often, in a women's college environment, we are quick to ignore that women can be exploitative predators, too. Your breasts, even swaddled in rhetoric of "beauty" and "empowerment," are still prurient, and you better believe that your classmates are trying to figure out whose nipples are whose.

Students who submit to the Web site don't sign a contract. By "empowering" yourself, you have disempowered your legal rights. Have fun trying to stop anyone from tracing those photos when you run for office or try to get a teaching job.

I am not sex-negative or body-shaming. I do not hate you or your sexuality, however you choose to express it. I shout down a culture in which woman have to take off their shirts to be noticed, seen as sexy and win approval, especially when this site that appropriates the name of our school – a place of learning and safety – in the interest of amateur wanking.

I shout down an Internet culture in which we don't see the issue with submitting to this. You have every right in the name of free speech and consent to do what you want – just don't believe the hype.

Think of the "Save the Ta-Tas" campaign against breast cancer: we as a culture care more about silly nicknames and fetishized body parts than the real women and real lives attached to those precious, drooled-over boobies.

Intent only goes so far. It is not our job to be looked at.

Respect yourselves, respect your classmates, take down the goddamn site and quit chopping up pictures of yourself in your need for attention.

The revolution will not be titillating.