BOOBLESS in Adventures From Prison

I’ve been stripped of my boobs. For the last year, I’ve been using a couple of photos taken from Vanity Fair and GQ that featured unedited photos from the TV shows True Blood and True Detectives. Nothing explicit mind you, just some pretty topless girls. I didn’t find them overly titillating (pun intended) or erotic, just nice to look at. I like the female body. I find it aesthetically pleasing.
Tasteful nude photography and paintings are among some of my favorite pieces of fine art. This has nothing to do with being a male and everything to do with celebrating the beauty of raw humanity. Unfortunately I live in an environment more prude than a convent.
For some reason lately our evening officer has been going around and shaking down a cell an evening. This in and of itself isn’t strange, what’s strange is his thoroughness. On average, when a cell is searched it takes about 20 minutes. He is taking well over an hour per cell. My neighbors saw him go through every single piece of paper and read it that I had. He’s done the same for every cell this week. My turn was on January 2nd or 3rd. Nothing was taken at all so I thought it was annoying but I was unconcerned. Last night, less than a week later, I come back from work to find he’d gone through my cell again!
Needless to say, I began to sweat. I have nothing to hide but it’s still disconcerting when the authorities search your home twice with no explanation. Unlike some inmates, who would just worry, I went straight to the CO in his office and asked what was going on. Turns out he’d forgotten he’d searched my cell and it wasn’t until halfway through my folders he realized it. Or so he says. I’m not sure. On the surface it is completely believable, but when you begin to connect the dots it seems that there is something weird going on. On the 1st of Jan., one of my friends was taken to the SHU. No one is sure why but general consensus is that he had some sort of tool used to pop out the rivets used to secure certain areas of the dorm and possibly drugs. After that they have shaken down 6 of us, all but one of which I know (and my SHU’d friend knew) very well. The guard insists he’s not targeting any particular demographic but we all certainly have more alike than different.
It was on my second home invasion that I lost my boobs. I guess they were technically against the rules, even if they came in magazines that are definitely not pornographic, so I can’t complain, but it still feels wrong to me. Even before coming to prison I believed strongly in freedom of speech in all forms, now I am emotionally invested in standing against government censorship. It wasn’t until I lost my freedom of speech and my consumption of other’s expressions of opinion and art that I realized how important this right is. Without being able to freely express ourselves and to experience what we choose, we become less than human and more like puppets. Something as simple as seeing a woman’s exposed breasts, in a magazine shapes our sense of the world and what our options in life are. Our bodies and minds are ours to do with as we please without punishment (all within reason obviously). If you want to post nude photos on a website (and you are of age) then you may do so and be free of retribution from the government. But when that vanishes, when suddenly you have to hide a page from a magazine a child could pick up off the newsstand, it changes you.
The anger, fear and confusion you feel about your situation is like nothing I can describe. It’s eerie and creepy in a way I’ve only experienced when reading about the Jewish people hiding in plain sight from the Nazi’s. I pray that no one who reads this ever experiences these feelings first hand. To be judged (and punished) on items and ideas unrestricted only a ½ mile (or less) from where I write this is absurd. It doesn’t rehabilitate, it simply restricts. Denying prisoner’s access to things that are not illegal, especially art and media, is beyond rational explanation. To be in this, or any Federal facility as a prisoner you must be at least 18 years old. Yet we cannot watch R-Rated movies or have a subscription to Playboy. Our wives and girlfriends cannot share their naked bodies with us through photographs and recently there have even been restrictions on written erotica. To what benefit? Am I the only one who thinks this is over-reaching and punitive for no reason?
There are 3 or so employees of the Federal government in each institution who are paid in excess of $40K a year who spend the majority of their duty time making sure we live in a PG-13 environment while every State facility operates just fine without the same restrictions. Is this really what you want hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars being used for? I hope not, because if it is then the Conspiracy theorists are right and freedom truly has died.
I encourage you to share this entry’s information and to research it yourselves. Tell me if I’m missing something because to me this seems like wasted effort that could be used instead to hire people to teach us useful skills so we aren’t hopeless as we attempt to re-integrate into a society that already shuns us as felons.