Naked Baby Butts: A Strange Controversy

Naked-baby photos are a staple of all family photo albums. I don't know what it is, but it seems like you're not a member of a family until you've been photographed in the nude and had that picture framed and hung in a place in the house where everyone, including everyone from the street, can see you and your rosy red cheeks.

I can still remember when the naked-baby-on-a-cloud photo thing was a craze. You know what I'm talking about — the pictures where you would put your naked baby on that massive cotton ball and just let them sleep while they got their picture taken.

Essentially, it goes without saying that American culture is weird, and we do this in America. #Murica 

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But are there certain limitations to the naked-baby photos? Like, is there an age limit for the naked baby in question, or is it the distribution of the photo that makes it worse or more “inappropriate”?

Recently, Olivia Wilde posted a pic of her 20-month-old son, Otis, on Instagram that received a lot of flak from the “easily offended moms” camp. Some of the comments were specifically related to the chance of that photo being taken by some sicko online and used for … yucky things.

An article published on Yahoo Parenting summed up some of the main reasons as to why some women were outraged at the photo. Some of the responses ranged from “This is not a picture for social media because, unfortunately, there are perverted people out there and these pictures could end up on child pornography websites” to other responses, like “More people will ‘like' that than you wish. Your naked child is nothing [to] upload [on] the World Wide Web, where it stays forever.”

And that's true; once you've put a photo online, it's darn-near impossible for it to leave cyberspace. But is the comment about pedophiles creeping on photos of your baby revealing a huge risk? “I don’t think that’s really relevant to the conversation about this picture,” Caroline Knorr, the parenting editor of Common Sense Media, said in that same article. “The risk is really quite low.”

So what are the potential risks of posting a picture like this according to Ms. Knorr? Backlash 15 years down the road from the subject in question. “Pictures of your kids can end up on meme sites like Imgur, and people can Photoshop them and turn them into something totally different,” Knorr said.

So?

The biggest threat is that your child could be used as a viral joke — a joke that may last a couple of days and then disappear altogether? A joke that uses a picture that no one but you and your child know the real identity of? I just really don't think that even plausible. In fact, I think that's a pretty stupid reason to base your decision on. 

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What do you think? Should parents keep the nudie pics off the internet, or is it just a harmless way to talk about your kids?