Internal Consitency on Porn (or whatever it is!)

New legislation seeks to ban the sale of postcards laden with ladies in bikinis in Rio de Janeiro. The premise is to reduce sex tourism and the image of Rio as a scuzzy city. Having viewed the postcards in question, my unsubstantiated opinion is that banning them will produce little of the desired effect.

1. People who buy the postcards are already in Rio de Janeiro. They are here for a reason and the postcard that they see/buy during the trip doesn't change that.
2. I don't know what kind of people would actually send these types of postcards to a friend, but I assume that word of mouth would do more than some staged photo to intice the friend to come (whether for sex tourism, the beaches, or the culture).

In addition, these post card are by far not the worse thing being displayed in the street. More concerning are the naked women displayed on beach towels hanging in store windows and adult magazine advertisements on billboards and on the sidewalk (no they don't cover like in the US). These are much more prominently displayed meaning that you (and all the children) walking down the street or driving on the high way are pretty much forcibly exposed to it. And as a colluege pointed out to me, while you will find many scantily clad beach goers in Ipanema, you won't find a naked woman covering herself with only her hair and hands.

Not done yet. O Globo, Rio de Janeiro's major newspaper, occasionally features photographs of topless women.

Oh one more. Have you ever been to Carnival. Not a lot of clothes being worn there either.

Obviously (to me on the beach), Brazil is more open about exposing the human body than in the US, though perhaps less so than in Europe where topless is the way women go. So to me this is a problem of priorities. And it seems rather obvious. Which leads me to conclude that perhaps the postcard ban is the easiest piece of legislation to push through because it isn't supported by a huge media conglomerate like Playboy, while still appeasing the more fundamental constituents and not really bothering anybody but the few gringos that buy the postcards as gag gifts or memorabilia.

But then again, I'm not surprised. It seems few people are or care to be consitent.