ABC's Bare Breasted Commercials
 Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008  by Brandon

Whether or not Thomas Beatie is a man or a woman is not a question the media poses: when Beatie, a "transman" (or female-to-male transgender) decided to carry a child because his wife was infertile, he automatically became the "pregnant man" everywhere from newscasts to the Oprah Winfrey show.

But when ABC is showing regular commercial promos that pan across the former female's nipples - under which the scars from breast reduction surgery are still clearly evident - isn't that a double-standard of the greatest kind?

Beatie will be appearing on the collaboration of People magazine and Good Morning America.

Even though CBS recently got off the hook on paying an FCC fine over Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" in 2004, that incident was blown to catastrophic proportions in the news media, becoming household knowledge. Here in the U.S. of A, female breasts are blurred out of mainstream cable broadcasts. But not, apparently, if we mutilate them.

The state of Oregon recognizes Beatie legally as a male, but not every state would. He still has functioning ovaries and a uterus--he opted not to extend his gender reassignment surgery to the female reproductive organs. Therefore, Beatie is genetically, and physiologically, a female.

If the internationally-syndicated network wants to call Thomas Beatie a pregnant man--so be it. It's symantics. But wouldn't you rather have to worry about explaining to a child why a female has breasts after the Superbowl halftime show, than explain a pregnant female-turned-male half-naked on every other commercial break?


Tell ABC what you think...and tell the FCC, too. Feel free to copy and paste this article as your message if you'd like.

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