> According to an account by Pliny the Elder, Praxiteles sculpted both a nude statue and a draped statue of Aphrodite. The city of Kos purchased the draped statue, because they felt the nude version was indecent and reflected poorly on their city, while the city of Knidos purchased the nude statue.
> The statue [...] was so lifelike that it even aroused men sexually, as witnessed by the tradition that a young man broke into the temple at night and attempted to copulate with the statue, leaving a stain on it.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_of_Knidos )
Just how strongly can we connect the Venus de Milo to the Aphrodite of Knidos? Well, it's a naked Aphrodite in a similar pose. Similar enough that it was originally attributed to Praxiteles. Aphrodite of Knidos is just standing there too, about to take a bath.
Imagine me posting a photo to Facebook showing a woman caught in the act of getting into her bathtub. She's not engaging in sex! Then again, videos of this exact subject matter are common on porn sites.
Imagine arguing that a still of Marilyn Monroe's dress getting blown up around her hips is about art, and not about sexual titillation.
Thus the issue is really more of sensibilities than anything. Nudity isn’t a big thing in Europe like it is in the US. It’s common for women to walk the beaches topless; and frankly they should be allowed to since it’s perfectly natural and men do it too. The whole “the statue is topless so it’s sexually explicit” comment is really weird to read in the context of European attitudes because we differentiate between nudity and sex (as the earlier examples demonstrate). Which is probably also why America needs the “free the nipple” (and similar) campaign if people like yourself consider any form of nudity to be sexually explicit regardless of context. I mean we are all born naked - it’s so weird to read someone say that the form we are born in is indesent and worse imagery than violence. I just can’t fathom that logic. Sorry :-/
