Drawing the lines

In last week's episode of The Girls Next Door, the girls decided to give Hef something special for his 82nd birthday: chocolate body parts. And yes, it's the body parts that would be of most interest to him.


(Also available here on YouTube.)

Because E! re-runs their shows with such frequency I came across this same episode several times while flipping through the channels. (And really, that's more a statement on how poor the pickings were on other channels such that I'd have to be looking for something to watch than it is about E! re-running their shows over and over.) I never sat and watched it all the way through, but between those instances I saw most of the episode, and certain scenes more than once.

In particular, what intrigued me was the censoring standards that they had to abide.

Obviously, on a show about three women who live at the Playboy Mansion*, there are moments of nudity where particular body parts are pixelated to obscure them on screen. And if you watched the embedded video above, you saw this done with breasts and buttocks on the girls as they allowed the molds for the chocolate pieces to the readied.

However, when the actual chocolate breasts and butt and vagina were made from the molds, those very anatomically accurate edibles could be shown on air with no pixelation whatsoever.

That was a bit surprising, but okay, it appeared that representations of body parts were not subject to the same censorship rules as the corresponding actual body parts.

Later in the episode, the group goes to Las Vegas for Hef's birthday celebration. In the afternoon they check into their colossal suite, and Hef is shown wearing a big foam hand, which presumably is birthday-related. However, rather than having the index finger extended in a "birthdays are #1" way, it appeared to have a different digit up (with more of a "screw birthdays" message).

And it was pixelated.

I know that showing the extended middle finger is considered offensive on American television and is generally blurred out, but this was not Hef sticking up his actual finger but a ridiculously exaggerated representation of the finger.

So, from this we can only discern the standards for censorship are: Nudity is fine if it's made by a fancy chocolatier, but there's no circumstance where the middle finger can be shown. Apparently, that gesture could offend someone who a short while earlier had no problem with seeing chocolate labia.

Okey-dokey. Let's all keep in mind that's where the line is.

Of course, although there's been plenty of previous cases of middle fingers on screen for the folks in Standards and Practices to cite as precedents, it's entirely likely that this is the first time that they've run into chocolate genitalia.

It will be interesting to see what happens the next time it happens. If it ever does.

Let's not hold our collective breath on that.

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(I say: If you're relying on "reality" TV for cheap nudity, just have the decency to go find real porn.)

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* Or at least who lived there at the time this was filmed.