Italian Sausage
Dave’s Dick Distresses
I wanted to be lighthearted today, as you can see by my headline which cracks me all the f**k up. I wanted to laugh at just how ludicrous this latest example of pearl-clutching-won’t-anyone-think-of-the-children censorship really is: a principal was fired for showing kids a statue—a statue of a biblical character created by one of history’s most renowned artists and originally intended for a cathedral, because the statue has been naked since 1504. That’s absurd, and we will laugh about in a few minutes because the hits keep on coming and if we don’t laugh, we are all going to spontaneously combust (a concept which also cracks me all the f**k up).
Before we laugh though, we have to have a collective cry because on Monday a person walked into an elementary school in Nashville, TN with at least two assault-style rifles and a handgun and killed three children and three adults. The thoughts-and-prayers people (who in a Venn Diagram would overlap considerably with the pearl-clutching-won’t-anyone-think-of-the-children censorship people) will likely focus on this individual and pretend to care about their mental health in an effort to say the problem is not with the two assault-style rifles and handgun.
I would call that the height of hypocrisy because these same people—especially the ones who have been elected to office—seem not to care about the mental health of anyone who hasn’t fired a gun recently. They certainly don’t care about the mental health of the now generations of students who have had to practice hiding under desks and have recurring dreams about being shot in school (as my daughter did at 11).
But this is Tennessee so that’s nowhere near the height of hypocrisy.
It’s a permit-less open carry state. Pretty much anyone over 21 can buy a gun and once they have it, they can carry it anywhere and any way they’d like. In public? Absolutely. At the library? Why not. On their shoulder? Sure. In their purse? No problem. Under their dress? Well, that could be a problem but only if the person wearing the dress has a penis.
You see, the height of hypocrisy in Tennessee is that just a few weeks ago, the governor signed a bill outlawing drag shows in public places because seeing a man perform in dress and makeup might—wait for it—harm the children.
Maybe after our collective cry, you’ll join me in a collective “F**k you, Tennessee.”
Marble Member Maddens; Principal Fired for Showing Kids Naked Statue
Michelangelo's statue of David stands just under 17 feet tall, but let’s face it: only a few of those inches were at issue when parents in Tallahassee got a principal fired for showing sixth graders a picture of the marble masterpiece without prior notification. David is naked, and David has a penis, and God forbid a child sees a penis (though I might note that approximately half of children have one).
I spent the weekend trying to figure out how big David’s penis is. I asked some art historians, but none knew, and one suggested it had never been measured. (I find it hard to believe that in all the years and all the restorations no one ever got out a yardstick.) I did some math: if the average human male is 69 inches tall with a flaccid penis measuring 3.61 inches and David is 204 inches or 2.95 times their height, his penis should be 2.95 times bigger making it approximately 10.6 inches. (I tried the math again with penis size as a proportion of total body height. The equation was far more complicated and possibly inaccurate, but I got similar numbers.)
It doesn’t look like David’s dick is anywhere near 10.6 inches long. In fact, many people have noticed that his penis—and those of many statues at the time—looks proportionally quite small by today’s standards. I recently wrote about a study that found penis size has grown 24% over the last three decades. While this only applied to the size of erect penises, it could be possible that penises were actually smaller five centuries ago.
Or maybe it’s just how we think about penises that has grown. There are a number of theories of why artists back then chose not to exaggerate or maybe even to de-emphasize the part of the statue that we’re clearly obsessed with today. Some scholars have suggested that larger penises were not valued at the time. Today they may be a sign of manliness, but back then penises were associated with foolish behavior and those with smaller penises were thought to be more intellectual and rational.
A paper published in 2005 by two doctors, not art historians, suggested that Michelangelo sculpted all parts of David’s body to depict the stress he was under as he was fighting Goliath. He has a concerned face, tense muscles, and a penis and scrotum that have been pulled tight into the body for protection. Shrinkage is real.
One of the art historians that I consulted (who was also my prom date so despite his professorial language, think a more giggly text exchange than legit journalistic interview), suggested that the small penis might have been an attempt to “downplay the sexual aspect in a Neo-Platonic way: the figure as an embodiment of non-sexual, abstract physical perfection, different from imperfect, real people (with larger penises and sexual desire).” He also noted that in the bible the David who faces down Goliath is a child, though I pointed out that the statue with its six-pack abs and carefully carved pubic hair is clearly an adult.
I started doing my penis math because I was going to joke that the Florida parents who complained were just awestruck by so many inches of raw sculpted manhood, but I know that’s not true. Mickey’s member as drawn by Maurice Sendak is probably less than two inches, and yet In the Night Kitchen is frequently banned from schools.
As a society, we are simultaneously obsessed with and uncomfortable around penises. Some of this is likely evolutionary. Until very recently in human history, those with no interest in penises (their own or someone else’s) were not going to carry on their genes. Some of it is prurient: many of us regardless of sex or gender get turned on by the male member. Some of it is probably because of the taboos—we are told from an early age that genitals are private and maybe dirty, and we shouldn’t even touch our own—which always make things more intriguing. And some of it is plain curiosity: most people we see in our lifetimes have their penises covered. When the don’t—whether it’s in a locker room, a porn magazine, or the Metropolitan Museum Art—we look.
Someone asked on Facebook how I would explain David’s penis to a kid. I said, not really joking, “What’s to explain? Kids are naked. Half of them have penises.” Thinking of this as a real exercise in talking to kids about sex, I would as always stay brief and casual. If a kid pointed out the statue’s penis and said, “What’s that?” I’d answer, “His penis and scrotum.” Then I’d answer any follow up questions. “Oh, the scrotum is where the testicles are.” Plain and simple until there were no more questions. If the kid had no questions and pointed to it just because it’s not something they don’t see every day, I would probably just agree, “I know, right, it’s funny that he has to stand around a naked for eternity.” Then we could move on to talking about David’s huge thigh muscles what flavor of gelato we’re going to try. (In my head we’re in Florence for this discussion and eating gelato at least twice a day.)
Barney Bishop III, the chairman of the board at Tallahassee Classical School, admitted that he asked principal Hope Carrasquilla to resign after parents complained about their children seeing a picture of the statue. Barney Bishop III tried to explain that the issue wasn’t with the statute itself, it was with the principal’s failure to notify parents in advance that a picture of it would be shown. Barney Bishop III told CNN: “We aren't trying to ban the picture. We think it's beautiful, but we are going to make sure the concept of parental rights is supreme in Florida and at our charter school.” Barney Bishop III (sorry for the repetition but of course this guy was named Barney Bishop III) says the school agrees 100% with Governor Ron DeSantis’ position on this issue.
(The height of hypocrisy in Florida, by the way, is that parents have the last say on everything unless those parents want to support their child’s gender transition, but that’s for another week.)
I hope that someday parents in Florida will realize that DeSantis has embraced the mantle of “parental rights” and fighting the forces of immorality because that’s all he has. His schools are over-enrolled and under-resourced. Florida ranks 48th in teacher pay and over the last two years vacancies have nearly doubled with an estimated 100,000 kids in Florida not having a teacher this year. Sure, some of this is about the pandemic and is happening in other states, but some of this has to be about Ron’s war on teachers who can’t say gay, read classic literature, or teach about racism without being afraid of violating the new anti-woke DeStandards.
I also hope that someday we all realize that the nationwide war on schools is about keeping the next generation of kids ignorant enough that they continue to vote against their own interests. I know this sounds cynical, even for me (and I’m not convinced Ron himself is smart enough to see this bigger picture), but the GOP knows that educated voters choose the other guy. Instead of changing policies to benefit voters, they work to prevent critical thinking and squash voting rights.
This particular story has a happy ending. It was so absurd that it drew widespread attention to all the other censorship going on across Florida and around the country. The meme game was pretty brilliant with pictures of nuns smiling in front of the statue, David with a Florida shaped fig leaf, and the statue in drag making the rounds on social media. In fact, the incident got so much attention that the mayor of Florence has invited the ousted principal to come to his city and see the statue up close. In a tweet the mayor said that he would like to recognize her on behalf of his city because “art is civilization and whoever teaches it deserves respect.”
She should get two scoops of gelato with that respect.
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