DigitalPriest.Com: View From the 27th Floor

ART AND ETHICS
sex & the single minister

I'm trying to work through this, this communications gap between men and women, between ministers and laity, between Christian and Jew, between New York and California. Between us, whoever "we" are, and them, whomever "they" are. The only thing we can ever be sure of, in this life, is that they are not us, and we certainly are not them. And, somewhere, some of "them" are confused by why a practicing minister has a picture of a half-nude woman on his website. The short answer is, of course, that it's none of your business. play audio► stop

I don't believe it ever occurred to me that, of all the self-serving whining I do here on my website— all the insipid blather about Minivans and Mommy Disease, my relentless criticism of the Black Church's Infatuation With The Year 1965, my cheap shots at the textual integrity of the King James Bible and those who believe it and it alone represents the true, unadulterated Word of God, my rabid attacks on Black Culture and the 2000 Non-Election— my suicide mission into the issue of Female Masturbation— of all the twisted, rabid yammering I've done here on the site, it never occurred to me that I would take heat over something as simple as a photo of a gal in a bathing suit.

Of course it's not just any gal, but up and coming supermodel Carla Campbell, recently seen in MAXIM's 2002 Swimsuit issue. And Carla was shot with a fisheye lens that made her head look huge and, well, other objects in view as well. And, I admit, Carla's wardrobe girl likely got confused, and bought a suit two or three sizes too small for her. But, those are technicalities. I liked the picture. I liked the picture as much for its artistry, for the interesting palette of oranges and dark hues, the key lighting off Carla's hair, as I did for the obvious delights of Carla herself.

"And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me. And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed. And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things."

—Matthew 11:27-33

It never occurred to me that some people might become confused by Carla, even offended by Carla. One poster characterized her photo as "demeaning," which genuinely surprised me. Sure, it's a cheesecake photo, just as the Calvin Klein ads with the naked guys lounging in their underwear are rather beefcakey, but I don't find those ads demeaning to men (just stupid: I don't personally know any men who lounge like that in their underwear. Most men I know lounge in sweat pants or huge shorts that needed to be washed months ago).

I'm trying to work through this, this communications gap between men and women, between ministers and laity, between Christian and Jew, between New York and California. Between us, whoever that is, and them, whomever "they" are. The only thing we can ever be sure of, in this life, is that they are not us, and we certainly are not them. And, somewhere, some of "them" are confused by why a practicing minister has a picture of Carla on his website.

The short answer is, of course, that it's none of your business. But, see, I've made it your business by posting all of that whiny blather, by telling you how to live. I really don't tell anybody how to live, I just tell you how I live. The rest is up to you. But, the last thing I want to do is confuse anybody. And, besides, just talking about all of this gives me an excuse to post more shots of happening babes in bathing suits, so why not.

I'm not sure I understand in what way Carla is demeaning. Is she demeaning in the sense of many rap groups are demeaning to blacks— that they make our struggle that much harder because they reinforce negative and superfluous stereotypes about blacks in this country? Does Carla's pinup shot set back the cause of women's rights and encourage men to continue to objectify women? If that's your case, then, I suppose you have a strong one. Admittedly, few if any men will view that photo of Carla and wonder what her views on global warming are. In principal, a shot of Carla lounging around in sweat pants or old shorts that should have been washed weeks ago might have been fairer to women's causes.

I'll admit to not knowing a whole lot about women, even though I consider myself a feminist. A feminist who, clutch the pearls, enjoys photos of women in bathing suits. I also realize I'm one of the few people I know who can appreciate the artistry involved in getting the classic pinup shot right. In creating a mood with color and lighting and being proactive and evocative. Anybody with a Polaroid camera can snap a semi-nude gal in some yoga-like contortion, but where's the artistry in that?

What makes this photo less demeaning than the photo of Carla? Why are Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate and Selma Blair given a free pass to pout and strut and be, well, desirable, but Carla has to work at MacDonald's and wear sweat pants to make some people feel more comfortable? As strange as it sounds, sometimes I wonder if black people aren't held to a stricter level of sensuality than whites. Is an oiled up, pouty black woman pornographic, while an oiled-up, pouty white woman can sell Mazdas? An oiled up white guy is a heroic figure, while an oiled-up black guy is a threat? Disclaimer time: I am not saying this is, in fact, true or that even this is what I think. I'm just asking a question. Blair appeared on Letterman the other night, star-struck and googly-eyed at Dave, wearing a black mini dress so short it ruined Dave's concentration and ours, as Blair fidgeted constantly in the chair, adjusting and readjusting, even though she was wearing shorts beneath the dress (she told us, but she really didn't have to tell us). Was that demeaning? Is demeaning in the eye of the beholder as well? What is "acceptable" sexy as opposed to "exploitative" or "demeaning" sexy? who makes the rules and where can I buy a copy?

The difference between David Hamilton and Larry Flynt
is more about motive and artistic integrity than simple taste and semantics. Hamilton once said, "A distinction must be made between eroticism and pornography; the media have blurred the disparity to an unforgivable degree. For those intelligent enough to recognize the difference, erotica will continue to hold a unique fascination. Social evils should not be confused with the pursuit of true beauty." Hamilton's work, mostly of young girls in the bloom of awkward adolescence, has a power only a few other artists, like Jock Sturges (Radiant Identities, The Last Day of Summer) and Sally Mann (At Twelve, Immediate Family, above), can approach. Hamilton evokes as much terror as eroticism in his exquisite work with young French models. The most revealing aspect of these images of young girls is their piercing eyes, their developing awareness of self and of the potency of their emerging sexuality. Sturges' studio was raided by the FBI, and many of Hamilton's finer works could not find an American distributor, both because of the power of their subject matter, "...deeply troubling portraits whose subject, addressed head-on, was the physicality and sexuality of the young" (A.D. Coleman, from the afterword of Radiant Identities).

There are no shots of Carla in Hamilton's collections, no fisheye lenses exaggerating proportions and no arched backs displaying the country kettles. Hamilton doesn't need any of that, He has those eyes. The eyes that are at once welcoming and convicting, uplifting and damming. His work preserves the essence of the young girl for all time, just as Sturges' nude studies on families and Mann's intimate portraits of her own family (right) capture wondrous and often disturbing frames in the lives of people who could be us. People who are us.

Carla, though, ain't us. She's them. She's not David Hamilton, but she's not Larry Flynt, either. Within the past half-dozen years, some genius discovered that the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue sold a gajillion copies because it was kind of PG-rated pornography. Porn that decent, church-going men could buy at the 7-Eleven (which stopped selling Penthouse and Hustler decades ago), porn these God-fearing fellas could leave lying on the shotgun seat of their Toyota 1-Tons without fear of embarrassment. After all, all of the naughty bits are covered.

This misses the point, of course, that the currency of pornography is not so much naughty bits as naughty thoughts, and. while SI's annual fleshfest is certainly the other color of the other horse, it is in fact the same stable. We are talking about the objectification of women, if not the exploitation of women. And how do I, as a man of "the cloth," whatever that means, justify gals in bikinis on my website?

"How beautiful
are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries. How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights! This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples; And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak. I am my beloved's, and [my beloved's] desire is toward me."

Song of Solomon 7:1-10

I am interested in a dialog about all of this
because women are a continuing mystery for me. For me, dealing with women can often seem like a stroll through a minefield, as I'm trying to figure the do's and don'ts and emerge with both kneecaps intact. I'm trying to figure out why Carla is demeaning, and if she is, in fact, a victim somehow. It is unlikely anybody was holding a gun to her head, and I'm sure her agent got a check before Carla squeezed into that bathing suit.

Just as there is no shortage of young boys wiling to rap about "bitches" and "ho's," I'm sure there is an endless supply of Carlas and other young women not only willing to be exploited but actively pursuing it, knocking on doors with portfolios of provocative poses and various stages of undress. Which does not excuse the exploitation or my role in it, but does make the point there are women who feel neither exploited nor oppressed by publishing evocative and, yes, erotic photos of themselves wearing lingerie or bathing suits. It's a huge industry now, this near-porn, that most men can easily and shamelessly present at the cashier counter of the 7-Eleven.

Clearly, a good deal of this near-porn treads the very fine line between guilty pleasure and salacious objectification (though it is all objectification on some level). Between admiring the beauty of a woman and lusting after her. A great deal of that is the intent formed n the mind of the beholder, but a great many photos, say, in Black Men's Swimsuit Annual, where many of the images in the slideshow are taken, clearly tax the line dividing defensible artistry from indefensible pornography. A subject does not need to be nude to be considered pornographic (see left). any more than a subject simply being nude would make that work de facto pornography (the Jock Sturges image, right). Of course, one could argue, the covers of these magazines fairly scream near-porn, bereft of most artistic value, so the buyer should, indeed, beware. Nobody expects spiritual enlightenment from these magazines and none of the girls in bathing suits appear to actually be swimming. Which is too bad, actually. A magazine that could credibly celebrate the greatness of God while appreciating His gift to man— women— would be an interesting read.

As a minister, I'd likely not have a copy of Black Men's Swimsuit Annual lying on the shotgun seat of my Toyota 1-Ton, as it sends mixed messages, when it really shouldn't. What is art and what is porn and what porn is actually art is precisely and completely my business. But, as moral leaders, we have a responsibility to live completely unlivable lives. To be immeasurably patient and chaste and inhumanly inhuman. The moment anyone senses feet of clay on a minister, he or she is attacked and vilified and dragged through the streets for the crime of being a human being. It is mirroring taken to its logical extreme, where we demand the impossible and certainly the implausible of our moral leaders. And, if they are exposed to be anything at all like us, we will unleash our violence on them, our loathing of our own deficiency and mortality.

So, I don't go to karaoke night at the local pub, in spite of the fact it is about as innocent and dare I suggest family oriented an evening out as you can have here in town. I don't go because, frankly, our parishioners are not mature enough to deal with seeing my car in the night club's parking lot (or, more likely, bumping into me inside). There are lots of places I don't go and lots of things I don't do, and even buying MAXIM, FHM, and the Swimsuit deal for this essay was a real risk to my ministry. Not that I'd committed any crime, but because our leaders within ministry have done such an incredibly poor job of educating our black Christian community much beyond plantation mentality, a mentality still at work in this America.

I've been asked, if I'm concerned about people seeing my car at the club, what would they think if they saw this page, with these images, on my site?

People driving by a club and seeing my car there leaves the issue open to speculation. Visiting my web site is a controlled environment, where the complete expression of my thought and purpose is here. I suppose my parishioners could come to this page, flip thru and not read anything, get offended and make a stink. But my complete statement IS here, especially the disclaimer on the page before you access this rant.

My car, sitting alone in the parking lot of a night club, provides no opportunity for context or a complete statement, and the maturity level of some people is such that their first thought will almost always be a negative one.

The social evils of pornography aside, ministers should, ideally, not be seen as exploiting women. Which is, of course, stupid. The very notion of ministry, within the Black Church, in practical application, perpetuates the exploitation of women. In the Black Church, women do absolutely everything but have control over almost nothing. Male trustees, male deacons and male pastors dominate church leadership, but it is the women who actually do most (and "most" is being kind, they actually do ALL) of the work. If the women of the Black Church organized a national boycott, the entire structure of the Black Church, as a national entity, would collapse.

There is so very much repression and exploitation of black women within the church, largely single moms who are easy prey for slick-talking preachers and musicians who dazzle them with their gifts. There is so much adultery and fornication going on, so many women being used and discarded and the vast majority of it kept hush-hush as the well-groomed and well-heeled elders of the church call the shots. It is disgusting. It is the gravest and most grievous sin, routinely committed within the church and advocated by the dominate male leadership structure and the women they've brainwashed to support them.

Carla is certainly less of a victim than the average black woman within the Black Church. I do not know Carla, but I can assume contracts have been signed and Carla calls her own shots. She is a beautiful Jamaican woman with a beautiful Jamaican body, wondrous onyx skin (a real challenge to light properly), and she decides when and where and with whom she will share herself.

I realize I have a pretty serious communications problem.
At 40 years old, I am still naively trying to negotiate the politics of perception: of people reading the intent of my words rather than what I literally say. It is the perception of my words being taken over the literal interpretation of them that I find infinitely more offensive than Carla or even Larry Flynt. Carbon 14-testing every word for layers of meaning and intent, playing Sherlock Holmes over every statement I make and then embracing the most negative interpretation of the statement is completely unfair. It is what psychologists call, "Mirroring," when our wounded inner narcissist insists on interpreting everything we see and hear as a validation of the very worst things we believe about ourselves. I know lots of people who hear only attacks, who have hair-trigger defense mechanisms, 911 responses to what must be incredible insecurity for them to see only attacks in every word and every deed.

My friends talked me out of asking a hostess at a local restaurant about her bra. Now, if I were a woman, and asked her what the brand of her bra was, she likely would have cheerfully shared that information. But, being a man, the politics of perception would be that I was hitting on her, which I wasn't. I mean, she was cute and all, but I was more curious about what kind of bra she was wearing. It was a wondrous bra— no apparent seams, and it wasn't one of those utility items that look so uncomfortable on women, that make women seem to be in a harness moreso than something comfortable. Her bra gave her a very natural shape without being provocative or demeaning. It gave her a very comfortable look, with no seams or straps or nipples, and it didn't raise her breasts to eye level or flatten them to extinction. I don't know what it is,. but it's the bra every woman should wear. She looks incredibly comfortable, incredibly natural, like she's not trying to be anything but herself. I really wanted to know what that bra was. But, as a man, and, certainly, as a minister, perception is politics, and I'd have likely embarrassed us both simply by the asking.

I once told one of my nieces that she should have some nude photos taken, and she liked to have died. I was/am on occasion a amateur photographer, so I'm always thinking in pictures and evaluating artistic potential. This was a gorgeous young woman, a breathtaking athletic burst of energy, at a time in her life where every tick of the clock redefined her. I wanted to shoot her every day, or at least every month, to document the changes as she made her awkward and frightening transition from kid to grown-up. I told her I didn't have to take nudes of her, in fact I didn't even have to see them, but already this college girl's mind was racing through dark corners of icky possibility simply because of the gender of and relationship to the person making the suggestion. My thinking was she had arrived at a place in her life where she looked absolutely amazing. And it might be nice to document this time with tasteful photos of wherever her comfort level was, so, when she's 103 years old, like Old Rose in Titanic, there'd be this record of this special and fleeting time in her life, this lightning in a bottle when she was, "a real dish." But she simply was not emotionally prepared to deal with the logic of my suggestion and became humiliated and embarrassed not by the suggestion so much as by my being the one to suggest it, and all the terror that holds for someone who, while being old enough to buy a gun, is still very much a little girl.

In many ways, I am very Vulcan. very Mr. Spock. I am capable of saying things that have absolutely no other meaning or message beyond the literal interpretation of the words themselves. And I have a naiveté that endures now into my 40's, where I expect people to simply take me at my word without bringing their own unannounced luggage along for the trip.

In everything I do, in everything I say and in everything I am or wish or intend to be, it is my desire to exalt and magnify God. Beauty and art certainly magnifies God. As nutty as this sounds, erotica and eroticism magnifies God. When done tastefully (and, yes, reverently), it celebrates the beauty of God's progressive self-revelation and His purpose and design for His creation. Women are supposed to be beautiful. The female form is, by design, a work of exquisite art. Shutting down this entire side of ourselves, of our humanity, in the name of the very God who created it, is utterly ridiculous. Simply admiring the female form is not evil. Appreciating a woman's beauty is not lusting after her. An appreciation for sensuality does require education, self control and self discipline, but the art, in and of itself, is not sin.

I suppose my biggest complaint with the near-porn magazines is not the women in them but the words in them. These magazines are extremely hedonistic and sex-obsessed. Even magazines like Playboy and Penthouse offer political insights, interviews with political and sports figures, and offer more in the way of editorial content than the often brutally offensive macho crockery of STUFF, MAXIM and similar magazines.

What bothers me is these magazines don't speak to the transcendent spirituality of man or the transcendent beauty and spiritual nature of women. There's little mention of God or religion at all, unless it is to mock them. Likewise, most Christian fare is incredibly bland and boring, with virtually no effort made to celebrate the artistry of the female form, perhaps because we all need to be treated as children who can't make that distinction between art and porn. Both the Christian and secular venues tend to exclude each other, with God rarely if ever making an appearance in men's magazines, and the female form being hidden and shunned, if not reviled and rebuked as something evil— in "Christian" media.

We act as though spirituality and sensuality are mutually exclusive, which they are not. God created sex. God created women to be, write this down someplace, women. To be admired and loved and cherished, but in a way that edifies God. Does lingerie model and host of Fox Sports Net's Blue Torch Leeann Tweeden, biting her nails here, magnify God? I think so, or she wouldn't be here. The artistry of the female form is not an accident any more than the creation of the world is. What demeans her, what represses her, is for us, whoever we are, to decide for her what is art and what is exploitation. We can all vote with our pocketbooks— I do not buy magazines like this, not because of the girls so much as because of how the spiritually-starved editorial content grieves my spirit with its emphasis on empty hedonistic values and its frat house tone. In fact, given the reality of that editorial content, I can understand the associating of that mindset with the photos of Leeann, which is not in any way fair to Leeann, who makes her living creating fantasies not so much for men but for women who dream of being desired and loved by the numb nuts morons they are married to. Men who are, I suppose, buying FHM Magazine to fantasize about Leeann. I don't fantasize about Leeann. I don't fantasize about Carla. I will never meet Carla, and if I ever do, she'll do what most gorgeous women her age do— treat me like I'm her dad. With a kindly obliviousness to the fact that I'm just a mortal male, as dumbstruck by her beauty as the next frat guy.

Please don't let Jerry Fallwell or Ralph Reed fool you: God wants you to have sex. God wants you to have glorious, mind-wrenching, sweaty, fall on the floor, neighbors banging on the wall, call-the-cops, bruised in the morning unforgettable sex. Ladies, God wants you to have mind-wrenching, pass-out from the ecstasy of it orgasms. Educate your husband to your needs as an individual and his responsibility under God (Eph. 5:25, Col. 3:19) to stop being a selfish ape ogling Leeann. God invented sex. God made sex wonderful and desirable. He just wants it to exist in a way that edifies and glorifies, rather than demeans or exploits. Forget Carla, millions of women, of all faiths, are exploited every day by their own husbands. Men who demand they cook and clean and see to the kids, but either pay minimal attention to her needs of intimacy and sexual fulfillment, or, alternatively, uses her like a hooker for utilitarian release of his own tensions before dozing off into a roof-raising snore.

As for we single minister types, there's no easy answer and no comfortable justification for just how sexy a photo of a woman I can post here without drawing fire. But I can reconcile my calling and my appreciation for these women quite simply: both are absolute proof of God's design.

Christopher J. Priest
April 10, 2002

Art Credits:

Cameron Diaz, Christina Appelgate, and Selma Blair
Photographed by Stewart Shining/Smashbox Studios for Rolling Stone®
Model In White Bikini Photographed by Zach Gold for Rolling Stone®
Copyright © 2003 Rolling Stone® LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Leeann Tweeden Photographed for FHM by Stephen Danelian
Halle Berry Photographed for FHM by Carlo Dall Chiesa
Alicia Keys Photographed for FHM by George Holz
Copyright © 2003 Emap Metro LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Kia Samuel and Lynette Maria Photographed by John Ricard
Trinidad and Vineta Narin Photographed by Robert Fein
for Black Men College Swimsuit Extra
Dayana Jamine Photographed by Chris Voelker
Def Jam/Dragon Records recording artist Ashanti
Photographed by James Hicks for Black Men Magazine
Copyright © 2003 Black Men Publications. All Rights Reserved.