This is not a hill I’d want to die on, but I do understand thinking this photo is fine. If I hadn’t been told it was from Playboy, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. It’s a conventionally-attractive woman in a hat showing a little shoulder. I wouldn’t be upset over Michaelangelo’s David either. It is less sexual than like 90% of modern TV or mass-market advertising. I suspect a similar image of “cleaner” provenance would not garner much attention at all, honestly.
But it is weird that an image from such a source was chosen in the first place. It is understandable that it makes people uncomfortable, and it seems like there should be no shortage of suitable imagery that wouldn’t, so…easy sell, I’d think.
On a related note, boy oh boy am I tired of every imagegen AI paper and project using the same type of vaguely fetishized portraits as examples.
Apparently the team making the first scanner needed a good test photo and that was the best they had on hand at that moment in terms of color variation and intensity.
Alexander Sawchuk, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California … along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague’s conference paper. … Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy. The engineers tore away the top third of the centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead wirephoto scanner…
Everything about the story sounds like it was a rush job, a decision made on a whim, after exhausting their existing catalog of test images. And who bring a Playboy mag to their university’s computer lab, and advertises their possession? They don’t even say who it was, probably to protect them from any embarrassing professional consequences. To me, that’s probably the strongest reason to retire it: it’s unprofessional.
And who bring a Playboy mag to their university’s computer lab, and advertises their possession?
Probably a random grad student. They were just coming out of the “sexual revolution” of the 60s at that point. It’d be a lot weirder ten years earlier or ten years later.
That a similar thing did happen ten years earlier is the weird part, I think.
There’s a bit more to the scan. You usually see the cropped version, but the full version has naughty bits. Not sure if it’s ever been published that way in journals.
I really don’t think the image itself is the issue. It’s the culture that would lead to brazenly sharing a porn magazine aroundnthe office, and subsequently using the image for a test photo. Then that same culture decided it should be standard because they liked looking at it. It indicates a culture of objectification of women. If an industry feels like sharing porn around is perfectly acceptable, you have to consider what else they think is acceptable. That’s what makes people uncomfortable (I assume, though I’m a straight man so not personal experience, just empathy).
Absolutely nothing. But imagine you’re working with some people and everyone’s constantly posting porn in the group chat. You’re just trying to kind of exist and get your work done. You might start to feel pretty uncomfortable with that culture.
There’s definitely a line between sex positivity, and including other people without their clear consent.
This is not a hill I’d want to die on, but I do understand thinking this photo is fine. If I hadn’t been told it was from Playboy, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. It’s a conventionally-attractive woman in a hat showing a little shoulder. I wouldn’t be upset over Michaelangelo’s David either. It is less sexual than like 90% of modern TV or mass-market advertising. I suspect a similar image of “cleaner” provenance would not garner much attention at all, honestly.
But it is weird that an image from such a source was chosen in the first place. It is understandable that it makes people uncomfortable, and it seems like there should be no shortage of suitable imagery that wouldn’t, so…easy sell, I’d think.
On a related note, boy oh boy am I tired of every imagegen AI paper and project using the same type of vaguely fetishized portraits as examples.
Apparently the team making the first scanner needed a good test photo and that was the best they had on hand at that moment in terms of color variation and intensity.
Which is still weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna
Everything about the story sounds like it was a rush job, a decision made on a whim, after exhausting their existing catalog of test images. And who bring a Playboy mag to their university’s computer lab, and advertises their possession? They don’t even say who it was, probably to protect them from any embarrassing professional consequences. To me, that’s probably the strongest reason to retire it: it’s unprofessional.
Keep in mind that Playboy had a reputation as more than just porn. A lot of really respected authors had work published in Playboy.
I not sure of its culture status when the event in question happened, but it would have been different then say, Penthouse.
Probably a random grad student. They were just coming out of the “sexual revolution” of the 60s at that point. It’d be a lot weirder ten years earlier or ten years later.
That a similar thing did happen ten years earlier is the weird part, I think.
There’s a bit more to the scan. You usually see the cropped version, but the full version has naughty bits. Not sure if it’s ever been published that way in journals.
I really don’t think the image itself is the issue. It’s the culture that would lead to brazenly sharing a porn magazine aroundnthe office, and subsequently using the image for a test photo. Then that same culture decided it should be standard because they liked looking at it. It indicates a culture of objectification of women. If an industry feels like sharing porn around is perfectly acceptable, you have to consider what else they think is acceptable. That’s what makes people uncomfortable (I assume, though I’m a straight man so not personal experience, just empathy).
What’s wrong with sharing porn around?
Absolutely nothing. But imagine you’re working with some people and everyone’s constantly posting porn in the group chat. You’re just trying to kind of exist and get your work done. You might start to feel pretty uncomfortable with that culture.
There’s definitely a line between sex positivity, and including other people without their clear consent.