Show Me!

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Show Me! is a sex education book by photographer Will McBride. It appeared in 1974 in German under the title Zeig Mal!, written with psychiatrist Helga Fleischhauer-Hardt for children and their parents. It was translated into English a year later and was widely available in bookstores on both sides of the Atlantic for many years, but later became subject to expanded child pornography laws in jurisdictions including the United States. In Germany, the book was followed in 1990 by a second edition that included, among other additions, a discussion of the AIDS epidemic.

Publication historyEdit

While many parents appreciated Show Me! for its frank depiction of pre-adolescents discovering and exploring their sexuality, others called it child pornography. In 1975 and 1976, obscenity charges were brought against the publisher or booksellers by prosecutors in Massachusetts,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> New Hampshire,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Oklahoma, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In all four cases, the judges ruled as a matter of law that the title was not obscene.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

However, starting in 1977, some states began to criminalize the distribution of even non-obscene so-called "child pornography," or "images of abuse," which arguably is not protected by the First Amendment. New York State, home of the publisher, St. Martin's Press, criminalized the distribution of non-obscene "child pornography" in 1977, but the publisher promptly went to court and obtained an injunction against the State. The court granted the injunction because the First Amendment was interpreted to permit the banning of only obscene material.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision, New York v. Ferber,<ref>New York v. Ferber, Findlaw.com</ref> which allowed the government to constitutionally ban the knowing distribution of even non-obscene "child pornography". Citing a chilling effect, St. Martin's Press then pulled the book, stating that though they believed Show Me! was not pornographic, they could no longer afford the legal expenses to defend it, and they did not want to risk criminal prosecutions of their own personnel and/or vendors who sold the book.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Court overruled a decision of the New York Court of Appeals, The People v. Paul Ira Ferber[1], which held that the First Amendment protected the dissemination of non-obscene sexual depictions. Show Me! was not the direct subject of the Ferber case, but the book was prominently featured by both sides in the litigation, and it played a significant role in the oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court.<ref>Oral argument at Oyez.org. Accessed 23 May 2008</ref>

In its country of origin, Germany, the book first won several awards, even from church organisations, but due to rising pressure from a newly arising "moral majority" the publishers and McBride decided to take it off the market in 1996. By then over one million copies in seven languages had been sold. It was never officially banned in Germany. Public libraries there keep it on hand and out of print copies are openly sold at collectors' premium prices.<ref>On the book's history, see Paul Okami, “‘Child Perpetrators of Sexual Abuse’: The Emergence of a Problematic Deviant Category,” Journal of Sex Research, 19 (1992), 117.</ref>

In New Zealand the book was banned by the Indecent Publications Tribunal in 1976. The ban was upheld in 1996.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Critical receptionEdit

Show Me! received mixed reviews from the mass media when it was first published. The Los Angeles Times called the photographs "beautiful...graceful, charming, and elegant," yet accurately predicted, in a severe understatement of what actually happened, that the book "may start (an) uproar."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Washington Post, on the other hand, described the photographs as "beautiful, assaultive, grotesque, and seductive," and concluded that Show Me! was only suited for "avant garde" parents.<ref>"Kiss the Stork Goodbye," Washington Post May 5, 1975</ref> Reviewer Linda Wolfe was more hostile in the New York Times, calling the book a "child-abusive joke".<ref>"The birds and the bees were never like this", New York Times July 13, 1975</ref> The 13-year-old daughter of Chicago Tribune reviewer Carol Kleiman stated: "I'm too old for it myself. The last part, though, with no pictures, looks interesting to read. The book is good for little kids because they don't know what society terms 'dirty' yet. You know, Mom, it's PARENTS I'm worried about. They're not ready yet."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Recent reviewsEdit

A 2005 Amazon review by Dr. Russell A. Rohde claims that the book, "appropriately delves into the issues of breast feeding, adolescence, pubertal changes, menses, sexual anatomies, pregnancy, masturbation, contraception, sexual behavioral disturbances and venereal disease. [...] I am not aware of any book comparable to this illustrated primer that fills the needs of sexual education so well."<ref>Template:Cite book </ref>

D. F. Janssen places it at the one extreme of a late 20th-century visual and textual revolution that enabled parents to illustrate information that up to that time had been transmitted orally. He sees the work as subversive not for its "too frank" portrayal of childhood sexuality, but instead for the primacy that the image takes over the text. In his eyes, the work "comes out of a culture with a long history of pathologising so-addressed 'primal scenes,'" a history that became manifest in particular with regard to the works of Will McBride.<ref>D. F. Janssen, Growing Up Sexually. Volume II: The Sexual Curriculum: The Manufacture and Performance of Pre-Adult Sexualities (October 2002)</ref>

The book is analyzed in an article on "Picturing Sex Education" (Discourse Volume 27, Number 4 / December 2006).

In 2016, Pennsylvania State University PhD. Brett L. Lunceford,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> an independent researcher in the field of Rhetoric, Sexuality and Gender, wrote an article «Mommy and Daddy Were Married, and Other Creation Myths in Children’s Books About Sex», published in «The Rhetorical Power of Children's Literature», with a review of few children's books about sex. Among them, Peter Mayle's Template:Not translated compared versus Will McBride's «Show Me!», highlighting issues and good sides of each book in textual part and in visual illustration. Lunceford resumed his article stating that “the children's books that children read help to shape the world in which they eventually live”.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Bibliographic detailsEdit

1974: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern Foreword by Helmut Kentler. Wuppertal: Jugenddienst.
1975: Show Me!: A Picture Book of Sex for Children and Parents St. Martin's Press. Template:ISBN
1975: Laat 's zien!: een fotoboek over sex voor kinderen en ouders Amsterdam: Kosmos. Template:ISBN
1978: Fais voir ! Un livre illustré sur la sexualité Montreal: Quinze. Template:ISBN
1979: Fammi Vedere! un libro fotografico di educazione sessuale non conformista per bambini e grandi Perugia: Savelli
1979: ¡A ver!: un libro de imágenes para niños y padres Salamanca: Lóguez Ediciones. Template:ISBN
1981: Få se: seksualopplysning i tekst og bilder for barn og foreldre Oslo: Aschehoug i samarbeid med Hverdag. Template:ISBN
1990: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern (2nd. ed.) 195 p. Wuppertal: Hammer. Template:ISBN
1990: Ukaž mi to! : Mezinárodní osvětová obrázková kniha pro děti a rodiče s informací o AIDS, translated by Jiří Kostelecký, Czech introduction by Jiří Raboch, 1st. ed., 199 p., Praha : Kredit ; Wuppertal : Peter Hammer, 1990, Template:ISBN, 20.000 copies
1995: Zeig Mal Mehr (5 ed.). 176 p. Beltz. Template:ISBN

ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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