Well, it’s December, which is for many people a “time of joy and a time of cheer.”  But I have to say, for me these last couple months have been difficult, for personal reasons that I will not go into here.  Anyway, it’s nice to have this blog as an outlet, a place to share my interest in the young girl as artistic subject, and as another weapon in the ongoing war against censorship and narrow-mindedness.  Which is why I must report that Google has minimized my ranking in their search engine.  Last summer one could type the artist and/or title of a piece I had posted, and it would almost certainly come up near the top of an image search after a couple of days.  Now one must type the full title of my blog as it appears over the masthead–that is, as the single word ‘pigtailsinpaint’–and then type the title of the artist or work to get it to come up near the top.  Clearly someone felt threatened by the content of my blog.  Nevertheless, it hasn’t hurt my numbers as much as you’d think.  I am still getting somewhere between 700 and 1500 hits a day on my blog, nothing to sneeze at for an out-of-the-way art blog devoted to a single subject.  I am exceedingly proud of my little site and all that it stands for. We soldier on.

On that note, I will be publishing an essay on Pigtails in Paint sometime this month, entitled, “Why We Need Naked Kids”, which will likely be posted on its own page, as I think it is important enough to warrant it.  A provocative title?  You bet, but the fact that this title would be considered provocative today demonstrates exactly why the essay is so desperately needed, because I see nothing inherently provocative about naked children, in art or any other social context.  It is only provocative because we, as a society, have decided it is so.  This blog was born in part as a result of what I see as a grave and growing injustice: the ever-narrowing strictures of what is allowable when it comes to children.  Those strictures manifest in a variety of ways, but the one I am most concerned with is the artist’s right to depict children, girls particularly, in the nude or in a sexual context.  In terms of the latter, it is important that we learn to differentiate art that speaks about child sexuality from images which are intended merely to arouse a prurient interest.  My essay addresses this matter to some extent, but, as I said, it is mostly concerned with nudity.

[Some text edited for time-sensitive information that is no longer relevant.  You can examine the December posts for yourself.]

I do have one more announcement: I got my first Wikimedia Commons link-back last month, for which I’m quite proud.  It was for Guillaume Seignac’s ‘Psyche’. [See the relevant post here.]

Comments:

From Bill Tree on December 3, 2011
You are a brave spokesman. I commend you.

I frequently vouch for the same viewpoints in conversations with reasonable people. But it is a whole different thing to boldly say so to the brainwashed masses. Do you ever get hate mail? Do you ever feel watched?

I know, it’s just art…but the witch-hunters are rabid.

Have you read “Pictures of Innocence” by Anne Higonnet? Give it a look.

From pipstarr72 on December 4, 2011
Thank you. I don’t see myself as particularly brave–I am simply fighting on behalf of common sense. I’ve never received any hate mail to date, only compliments. I think most people at heart agree with my position, but they are afraid to say so. People like Ray Harris and I provide them with the outlet to do that, or at least to support us with their patronage of our sites. I certainly hope I am watched; people need to pay attention to what I’m saying, including the authorities. If you mean am I worried about being watched in real life, I don’t feel any particular concern about that, nor have any reason to. I’ve not read Higonnet’s book but it’s been on my reading list for some time now.