Dowbrigade

AUGUSTA, Maine - A lingerie shop has stopped using live models to
draw attention and customers after one of its models received harassing
phone calls, the store’s owner said.

Spellbound drew protests _ as well as window shoppers _ when it began using
live models who dressed in lingerie and posed in the storefront windows
shortly after the shop opened on Water Street last fall.

Some suggested that the women brought life and beauty to the street, while
others said using scantily clad women in storefront windows was morally
reprehensible. A group calling itself Christians Lovingly Advocating Decency
protested in front of the store on Valentine’s Day weekend.

from Seacoast Online News

It’s easy to see how live lingerie models could change the whole way
American men look at a trip to the shopping mall. It makes a lot of sense;
although a kinky minority may be able to get excited about display window
mannequins (see
the Plentyhorse story), most American males will watch attractive women in lingerie
more intently, mindlessly and tirelessly than even football.

Unfortunately, an unbalanced few (fished from the same pool as the mannequin
freaks) feel forced to go further and ruin it for the rest of us.

Don’t we feel that this is a gross display of sexism, demeans women
in general and these models in particular, and is emblematic of the decline
of moral values in our increasingly commercial culture?

Not really. The human form reigns as God’s greatest creation. As
long as the genitals are covered, we see no reason beyond Puritanism,
provinciality
or priggishness to ban public displays which would merit no more than
a PG rating should they appear in a movie.

Artists at least since the times of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome
reveled in the revealed human body. Maybe if the lingerie shop
were in Najaf, say, or Islamabad the community standards would be different,
but we say that in a 21st century free country it is a shame we can’t
enjoy live lingerie models at a store near us.