A reader raises interesting questions relating to chastity, modesty and raising children in a note about the movie Babies, now in theaters:
We went to see “Babies” with another family from our church ... everyone loved it. This is the best movie now playing (as far as I know ... not that I’ve seen everything in theatres, but from what I’ve read I’m not aware of anything now playing likely to displace “Babies” in my personal estimation).
One question about your review. You say that you “see no real reason” children shouldn’t see “Babies,” in spite of the “cultural and maternal nudity.” I don’t necessarily disagree, but I suspect that the bare-breasted Himba mothers [in Africa] may make some parents uncomfortable, particularly those with adolescent boys. From what you’ve written elsewhere, I’m pretty sure you agree that adolescent boys can be particularly at-risk in this regard. How would you respond to these concerns?
As a former adolescent boy, I’m well acquainted with the sensitivities of that particular demographic. Let’s begin by agreeing that near occasions of sin are not the same for everyone, and that sensitivity is always needed in this area, for some more than for others.
Lurking behind this question are issues connected with all sorts of larger moral, social and pedagogical issues. How do we foster and strengthen chastity? How do we deal with a world full of distorted images, false ideals and shameless fashions? How are social standards of propriety related to moral norms, and how are they separate? How do we deal with different personal or cultural attitudes or comfort levels regarding propriety?
How we answer these questions in turn impacts other questions. How, when and what do we tell our children about sex? What is appropriate for them to witness between Mom and Dad? More broadly, what about topics like the propriety of breastfeeding in public or in social situations? Should breastfeeding mothers be consigned to the ladies’ room or otherwise relegated behind closed doors, or is it enough to make a reasonable effort to be discreet?
Conscientious parents today know that far from providing appropriate social support, the larger culture actively hinders and opposes them, and that some level of counter-cultural resistance is necessary. Perhaps some level of counter-cultural resistance was always necessary, but in our media-saturated world, with naked supermodels and references to sex draped across billboards, banner ads and so forth, it’s become far more essential than ever.
Resistance is necessary, but there’s smart and healthy resistance, and then there’s wrongheaded resistance that becomes part of the problem. How so?
Let me tell you a story about Joseph Ignatius Breen—a name with which more movie-watching Catholics should be familiar. A Philadelphia Catholic of Irish stock, educated by Jesuits when that meant something, Breen was head of Hollywood’s Production Code Authority from 1934 to 1954.
The Production Code Authority was Hollywood’s self-censorship mechanism. It was created by the studios in response to boycott threats from the Legion of Decency and their constituency and also to stave off the threat of government censorship.
Breen’s job was largely to work with filmmakers during the development process to ensure that films were morally acceptable. Often maligned today as a censorious nabob of negativity, Breen was in fact a savvy film aficionado as well as a pious Catholic, and he could be as sensitive to the filmmakers’ creative interests as to moral concerns of viewers.
I say all of this by way of prefacing one of Breen’s foibles. Like many devout Catholics, Breen had a reverentially high regard for womanhood and motherhood. So sacred were these mysteries for Breen, and the resulting aura of taboo around the female body, that he actually wrote a memo directing that farm scenes were to suggest, rather than show, the udders of cows, and on no account should there be onscreen milking!
I have a lot of respect for Breen, and I’m the last person to sneer at the blush of modesty. That said, this is a memo from cloud-cuckoo land—an overwrought delicacy too many generations removed from the farm. Breen’s Philadelphia Catholic upbringing may have served him well in a hundred ways, but in this way it did him wrong. I could sympathize with someone so scandalized by the realities of urban life that he finds it necessary to flee to the farm. I’m much less sympathetic with someone so urbanized that he finds it necessary to flee the scandalous realities of farm life.
This is not proper concern for propriety, but a near-Manichaean abhorrence of biological reality. It is emphatically not the way to guard chastity. On the contrary, ratcheting up the taboo level so high can actually have the opposite effect, creating obsessive forbidden-fruit allure.
We all want to shield our children from harmful influences, but sometimes it’s really ourselves that we’re shielding—our own discomfort more than our children’s real good that guides our choices. Many well-meaning parents try to shield their children from realities of suffering and death that, once again, are part of everyday life for children on a farm. I remember a grown woman at an urban screening of Disneynature’s Earth (a woman who had probably seen any number of cinematic shoot-outs and car chases) almost hyperventilating with anxiety over footage of a wolf running down a caribou calf. Her excessive anxiety, I think, is not unlike Breen’s discomfort with cow udders, and, to a lesser extent, the discomfort some would feel over the cultural nudity of the Himba women in Babies.
Far from posing a likely occasion of sin, I think something like Babies is much more likely to be a healthy corrective for young men surrounded by distorted mass-media images of women presented solely as unreal objects of male desire. The mothers in this film are real women, not supermodel fantasies. False media images build up an illusory mystique of the abstract, hypersexualized female body. A certain earthy demystification of the body can be both compatible with propriety and an aid, rather than a hindrance, to chastity.
I’m not saying that once we get over our Victorian or Puritan hang-ups and learn to be frank and honest, everything will be lovely in the garden. Original sin is an intractable reality, and sexuality is a mystery calling for appropriate reverence and reticence. I am saying that reverence and reticence on the one hand, and frankness and honesty on the other, are complementary, not contradictory. A balanced Catholic pedagogy should include both.
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Testing.
Quick question: You say that these women are “real women,” meaning what? So beautiful women are not “real women”? Would it change your argument if a couple of the women in the documentary were young and in great shape, extremely beautiful women with better than average bodies? Should the fact that they are average, regular women really be part of your argument? Haven’t seen the movie, by the way, just commenting.
You should see it!
Certainly it’s relevant. If the glorification and objectification of a certain body type is part of our culture’s problem, then non-conformity to that supposed standard is relevant to the corrective value of other images.
To take an extreme example, consider the decrepit nudity of aged, malnourished prisoners in the concentration camp footage from Schindler’s List. Is that relevant to the question whether that footage is a likely occasion of sin? Would it matter if the camera focused on naked starlets instead? Yes.
Semi-unrelated anecdote: A young man comes into Victoria’s Secret to fill out a job application. He leaves it blank when an employee advises him, “Most of our customers don’t look like the women in the catalogs. They look more like your mother.”
Ok, so it would change that part of your argument then if at least one of the women in the movie was extremely attractive and well-endowed. I agree with your reference to Schindler’s List, but if I’m following you correctly, nudity, within the context of this movie’s nudity, of average looking women=recommending viewing for younger audiences, nudity of even one extraordinarily good looking woman=not recommended viewing for younger audiences?
Great post!! I think you’re spot on with this. And I can’t wait to see “Babies.”
Anon: No. I said it was relevant. That doesn’t justify your equations. Also, allow me to take this opportunity to disavow the usage of terms like “beautiful” and “average looking” from your comments. My “real women” was meant as a positive valuation. I’d rather not try to convert my point into the very reductionistic idiom of beauty as an object of male desire that I’m critiquing. Cheers.
Hey Grey, I love ya man, seriously, I love decentfilms.com, good stuff. Maybe I’m just in playing devil’s advocate and evidently not doing a good job, so let me just say I agree with what your saying.
What if I’m a women who is seen by most as the sexy “starlet” type. Don’t you think I might take offense at your seemingly not including me in your category of “real women”? I might also be uncomfortable with the implication that if I showed nudity in a movie such as this it may be relevant enough to tip the scales of recommendation because I don’t look like most mothers. I’ll take your response as the last word, and maybe I’m just getting hung up on technicalities, as usual.
Anon: Okay, you won me over with your last line, so insightfulness points there. :) In using shorthand I assume a certain level of reader participation in understanding my meaning. Literally, obviously, all women are “real women,” including starlet types. So what am I getting at? A number of possibilities come to mind.
1. I might be saying that while all women are “real,” our collective idea of “what women look like” is distorted by the narrow range of what women look like in catalogs and banner ads, etc. These mothers are thus “real women,” not over against actual women who pose for catalogs and banner ads (who are just as real), or over against women who look like they could do, but over against the collective idea of “what women look like” resulting from media selectivity.
2. I might be saying they haven’t had “work done,” nor do they look as if they might have done, or otherwise approximate the look that women who have work done are trying for. I might also be implying that the look in question is significantly an artifact of unrealistic and unhealthy diet and exercise regimens, deceptive wardrobes and photographic fakery, among other techniques.
3. I might be saying that while the women posing for catalogs and banner ads are real, they are presented and packaged in a way that invites us to regard them as fantasy objects of desire, to that extent unreal. By giving us women who are not packaged and presented in that way, this film invites us to see them simply as persons, as real women rather than as impersonal objects of desire.
In short, I don’t think there’s any need for starlet types to take offense! P.S. My email address is right there in the right col. Cheers.
It’s not that attractive women aren’t real, it’s way “sexy starlets” are presented that makes them unreal. Makeup, lighting, plastic surgery are just the surface of how much these women are manufactured. There’s so much rhinoplasty in Hollywood that actresses who still have their natural noses are labeled “unconventional looking”. Megan Fox is a real woman, but the image of her on the big screen/tabloids/magazines is not. At least, that’s what I took from it.
While I would never OK my son’s viewing of Playboy, he has an uncensored subscription to National Geographic. Also, I do not censor my son’s viewing of my Renaissance art books.
My husband was introduced to National Geographic as a young teen and it gave him a lifelong addiction to pornography. It has been a nightmare for me and our children. It’s just more unnecessary temptation. We all need self-discipline, but parents need to be more aware and educated in truth.
Nudity of any grade is likely to manufacture lust in the minds of many. Is it therefore not advisable to avoid ? All sorts of arguments for and against are possible. If any image has any possibility of generation of lust must be avoided
Steven the Grey has become Steven the White… thanks for your last post :)
@Anon: Wow! Thanks for the vote of confidence. Cheers.
@K.C.: “If any image has any possibility of generation of lust must be avoided”
If literally followed, this would mean the following: (a) Everyone should avoid all images of the opposite sex (or in some cases of the same sex.) (b) Everyone should wear burqas. (c) Everyone put out their eyes.
I’m sorry, “any image with any possibility of generation of lust” includes Jennifer Jones in The Song of Benadette, Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life and Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. There is no way that a woman can dress that can prevent all possibility of lust. Even putting a woman in a burqa doesn’t really neutralize the threat. It can even make it worse.
And it doesn’t even stop with actual women. Don’t forget, Breen (in many ways a sensible and thoughtful Catholic) was worried about cows. Apparently vision is just too hazardous for the good of souls!
There’s a germ of truth here: It is better to lose an eye than to be cast into Gehenna. It is better to starve to death than to go to hell over the supermarket checkout aisle magazine covers. It is even better never to go to Mass than to lose your soul over attractive female parishioners. Is it possible to lose your soul at Mass? Yes. Is this a reasonable worry for most people? No.
Catholic moral theology includes an anthropological principle, which basically means that God wants us to follow him in ways that are in keeping with our human nature. Anthropological principles extend even to sacramental theology; thus water for baptism is what we call water, and even the real presence in the Eucharist endures as long as the species of bread and wine are evident to human senses.
God does not want us paralyzed by morality, unable to live in a human way. God does not want farmers to be afraid of going into barns for fear of losing their souls in uncontrollable thoughts of lust at the sight of cow udders. God does not want us to be unable to walk down the street for fear of seeing an attractive person of the opposite sex, even one who might be less than modestly dressed.
Nor does God want us to disavow art and culture. The Church has not sandblasted the Sistine Chapel because Michelangelo’s nudes could lead some into sin. Can you lose your soul in the Sistine Chapel? Yes. Is this reason for no one ever to enter the Sistine Chapel? No.
You say “Nudity of any grade is likely to manufacture lust in the minds of many. Is it therefore not advisable to avoid?”
I say, (a) a TV potato chip commercial with a fully clothed supermodel is more likely to inspire lust than the ethnographic nudity in Babies, and (b) the ethnographic nudity in Babies is, again, likely to have a corrective effect for many that can actually help people avoid lust by helping them to recognize the falsity of prurient media images.
Focusing solely on any element of possible danger (however slight) to the exclusion of possible benefit prejudices the case and would lead to paralysis and doing nothing, since all action comes with risk. Of course inaction comes with risk too! So risk avoidance by itself is ultimately an unworkable criterion.
If Catholics should not watch a movie like, say, The Mission, about the work of Jesuit missionaries among the Guarani Indians of South America, does that mean that the missionaries themselves should not have lived and worked among the Guarani?
@Dee: My heart breaks for your family, truly, and I will pray for you all. But in the first place, how can anyone, even your husband, be sure of the causality you suggest? Is there really reason for confidence that if only your husband had never encountered National Geographic, your family would have been spared this nightmare of pornography? Plenty of men have discovered pornography without National Geographic, and plenty of boys (including me) looked at National Geographic without developing a taste for porn.
And, again, I find honest, realistic images of women of the National Geographic sort to be a corrective to the false appeal of prurient media images. They can make young men less susceptible to our pornographic culture, rather than more.
Hi Mr. Greydanus,
What do you have to say about Babies filmakers’ other films, notably “The Kids Are All Right”? Is support of “Babies” a support of this film, which is clearly morally troubling for the Catholic viewer?
Thank you,
“Al”
Perceptual shifts intrude into every aspect of our awareness. They provide multi-faceted, paradoxical impressions that enrich our understanding. The opposite of shallow breathing, pornography focused attentiveness is not a blank. The opposite of the voyeur’s fascination is a tenderhearted desire to protect the vulnerable. Nowhere are we more vulnerable than in our perceived and real physical inadequacies. They are a very real component of our identity. The devoted love for our spouses that we want to experience is nourished by a willed concern to protect their person and identity.
St. Paul’s metaphor of church and human body relates to this.
On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honorable we invest with the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, RSVCE 1 Cor 12: 22-25
In married life as in all human relationships the high road of solicitous concern and gentle respect is increasingly eroded by real-life inadequacies in the person we ought to honor. How strange it is that without grace and without a willed determination to grow in love and respect we objectify the inadequacies of our loved ones and undermine their identity as well as our relationship.
As we grow in awareness of another persons weaknesses and personal fears we have an opportunity to comfort, affirm and protect. This is a participation in the higher gifts of 1 Cor 13.
While the earthiness of family life is a constant reminder of our mammalian realities we rejoice in the possibilities of living as the Lord intended. We need to stand against Screwtape and his loathing contempt for the human animal and rejoice with the Lord who trains us for the eternal life.
I can’t wait to see the movie Babies.
Daniel J. LaBelle: Brilliant comments. Thanks.
Mr. Magnus,
The filmmakers behind Babies, French director Thomas Balmès, his producers and production companies Canal+, Chez Wam and Studio Canal, have (AFAIK) nothing to do with the American indie comedy The Kids Are All Right.
You are probably thinking of the fact that both films have the same American distributor, Focus Features. Focus picked up distribution rights for The Kids Are All Right because they believed they could sell it and make money. They picked up Babies for the same reason.
One could choose to try to punish Focus for distributing TKAAR (or, if one preferred to think of it that way, avoid material cooperation in their corporate activity) by not patronizing Babies or any other films they distribute. This, though, is neither required by moral theology nor, in my judgment, prudentially advisable. On the contrary, I think it does more harm than good.
The relative success or failure of a particular film directly influences future decisions about what sorts of films will or won’t get made, get distribution, get marketing push, etc. For example, if The Kids Are All Right does well and Babies doesn’t, we can expect more movies like The Kids Are All Right and fewer movies like Babies, and our culture will be the poorer for it.
In terms of material cooperation, your ticket dollar for Babies does much more good than harm. Locally, it supports a theater in your community, helps pay the wages of ticket clerks and concession workers who need those jobs. It rewards theater management for bringing in a smaller film, a “Real Movie,” with a positive message. It makes movies like this more likely to stay in theaters for longer runs.
At the distributor level, it tells Focus, “We want to see more movies like this.” Finally, it rewards the filmmakers’ and producers’ act of faith in creating a pro-life film in our anti-life times. Some of the same considerations would apply to buying the DVD.
Mr. Greydanus,
Thanks! A great response.
Al
“I say, (a) a TV potato chip commercial with a fully clothed supermodel is more likely to inspire lust than the ethnographic nudity in Babies, and (b) the ethnographic nudity in Babies is, again, likely to have a corrective effect for many that can actually help people avoid lust by helping them to recognize the falsity of prurient media images.”
As a 23 year old male, I could not agree with this more. Seeing nudity in its natural beauty, surrounded by family life and not as its ‘lust has no consequences’ message society tells us today, has done more for my battle with lust than a burqa ever could. Lust is a disordered desire for sexual pleasure. It is not any mere hint at a sexual feature. Putting our sexuality in its proper context - family life and love - fights self-pleasure and reorders our desires!
I found your mention of Joseph Breen to be interesting. I watch a lot of classic movies and I generally find those types of films to be so much better than the ones that are made today, both on an art, an entertainment, and a morality level. But not all movies that were made then were prudish or even morally “perfect”. Many people seem to demonize (in fact, I have found no one who supports it) the Hays Code, but I think that is really unfair. Yes, there were some things that were over-the-top (like the issue with cow udders) but is it really that big of a deal? I don’t think any film, unless it is one about bovine mastitis, would really be affected by the absence of cow udders. I know that this is only an example, but I think that Breen probably did more good than not. And, like I said, when one views a lot of old films it becomes apparent that there was A LOT that they did let sneak by, not all of which I am perfectly comfortable with. The difference being, of course, that anything is rarely gratuitous or explicit—but merely implied.
But even in the days of the Production Code, viewers needed to exercise discretion. I think in a certain sense Breen’s attempts actually enhanced the movies that were made then. The subtlety and many ways of interpreting classic films is often what made them so great. Imagine if Casablanca or All About Eve or so many others were made today instead of then. The things that were presented in those films were not always perfectly innocent, but today without the Code producers would doubtless feel the need to put in a lot of garbage that only detracts from the story. These films (and I’m only using them as examples) also present a lot of lessons and moral dilemmas (that is part of what makes them excellent entertainment, in my mind—they make one think and question motives, etc.). And in a more relativistic time I fear that would be watered-down, too. My point is that the Production Code was not a bad thing and in many senses it actually contributed to much better movies. I realize that it’s demise was inevitable, but I relish a time when even though society was not perfect (and never has been) the movies made reflected a more conscientious effort to uphold the good. In many instances I think that is in direct thanks to Joseph Breen.
As an 18 year old male, I’ll second Patrick’s comment.
@Audrey, thanks for your comments. We have converging thoughts here. The Production Code or so-called “Hayes Code” (not that the Protestant Hayes had anything to do with it; it was written by “Hollywood priest” Daniel Lord, S.J. and Catholic layman Martin Quigley) represents a thoughtful and impressive attempt to apply moral considerations in a systematic and serious way to cinema. I wouldn’t want to reimpose it in exactly the same form even if it were possible, but certainly it gets a bad rap today.
Breen’s influence on films was often salutary, and I salute him for his efforts to redeem the culture. Breen’s role in the culture that brought us films like Going My Way and The Song of Bernadette is huge. That’s why I say more Catholic movie watchers should be familiar with him. He had limitations and blind spots, certainly, and sometimes films suffered because of him, but overall he was on the side of the angels and did good work.
Incidentally, regarding elements in Golden Age films that might make you uncomfortable ... sometimes these things slipped by while Breen was out of the office!
@Patrick and Beowulf, thanks also for your comments. One more semi-unrelated story: Decades ago, I saw a pair of photographs side by side in the pages of, I think, Time magazine. As I recall it, on the left page was part of a story about Mother Teresa that included a photo of her hands holding a rosary. On the right page was an advertisement for, I don’t know, a Las Vegas casino or something of the sort, featuring a scantily clad chorus girl.
The juxtaposition of the two images—the gnarled fingers clutching the beads, the glittering scraps of costume and feathers clinging to the showgirl’s body—was so striking and dissonant that I thought, “Wow, some advertising editor really blew it there.” The image of the hands was so powerful that next to them the photo of the smiling showgirl looked merely tawdry and tasteless, not at all appealing.
Interestingly, I wasn’t the only person who noticed. Later that week I heard a radio commentator on a local Christian radio station describe exactly the same reaction to that same spread.
It may seem odd to some that Babies’ depiction of the bare-breasted Himba mothers could have an effect not unlike that image of Mother Teresa’s praying hands, undermining rather than inflaming concupiscence and inspiring instead humble, humane respect and charity, but it is certainly the case.
To give an extreme example, there are (historical, reverential) paintings depicting the “Madonna and Child”, i.e. the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus, in which one breast is exposed. I suppose it’s possible that such a picture might pose a problem for a specific person, but in general, I wouldn’t expect most parents to have a problem with such because it’s not a sexual context. Similarly (to give a secular example) with depictions of e.g. “Liberty” with a bare breast. The mere presence of topless females in this movie should not be a problem generally, unless there are specific concerns related to a specific viewer.
I note in passing that some people or societies consider women’s hair as something which should be covered (vis-a-vis the historical roots of a nun’s habit), or more extreme, faces…
I think the easiest way to resolve this discussion and please both camps here is for Hollywood to posthaste produce a film entitled “Scarlett Johansson’s Babies”. But if they really wanted to rake in the cash with minimum outlay they could even just make a short featurette about the crew of the original film and call it “Scarlett Johansson’s Babies-makers”.
And that’s all I have to say on the subject.
Victor, I’ll accept that that’s all you have to say on some subject ... in some hypothetical other combox.
This reminds me of a long-standing kerfuffle on Facebook . . . women are allowed to post profile pictures of themselves in all kinds of revealing outfits (bikinis, corsets, sexy nurse Halloween costumes, you name it), but breastfeeding pictures can be banned. Ostensibly, the site only pulls pictures with visible aureoles, but if some troll complains about a breastfeeding picture, it can be pulled even if there is no visible aureole and the image is far less revealing than one of the same user in a bikini top. Our culture seems to have forgotten what breasts are for.
Thanks for this review! As an aspiring artist, it has been extremely frustrating for me to confront this sort of fear of the body (especially, almost exclusively, the female body). If you really think about it, the female mammary glands are not even sexual organs, and this mystique of the breast, either in objectifying women’s bodies as sex-objects or in fearing women’s bodies as an occasion of sin and an instrument of seduction (right…), says more about our culture than anything else. I’m more concerned about the men I meet who can’t look at women’s bodies than the men who can healthily watch this film, recognize any potential attraction as a normal, biological response, and continue with their lives. The most prudish men I have ever met all ended up as either extremely bizarre stalkers with no idea how to treat women or with unplanned pregnancies because they made the female body such a forbidden fruit. The fact is women look a certain way. It’s natural. It’s the way that we were made for the bearing and feeding of children. If you must fantasize over it madly like a dog over a piece of meat then you may be the one with the issues. Are you really concerned about lusting over nursing mothers? Really? And, just for the record, unclothed male chests are not exactly unappealing, in a sexual way, to women. Trust me. You can tell me it’s different, that women aren’t turned on, that we’re not visual (right, I’m a non-visual art major… fancy that), and that we don’t find images popping into our heads unwarranted at the sight of a shirtless man with great abs, and maybe this comforts you in some way. But, it just isn’t true, and ask any woman with a poster from 300 pasted to her dorm wall what exactly she wants that there for. It isn’t because of the color combinations, I assure you.
Maybe I’m being snarky, but I am sick and tired of being treated like I have instruments of seduction pasted unnaturally to my body (which is apparently an aberration from the default male form… despite the fact that we all start in the womb as females…). I’m all for modesty, but there’s no mystery of sexual desire under my shirt. They’re for feeding any future children I might have. They’re not for “eloquently” (pretentiously) “respecting” (aka fearing; note, I’m all for TRUE respect and modesty), or objectifying. If you have a huge issue over breastfeeding and get turned on by that, you probably have the problem and a warped view of women and sexuality. I’m sure someone will spit a thousand words at me and call me a !@#$% for this, but sometimes you have to speak the truth.
Thanks Steve for the review! You’re a very respectful and healthy person!
I know this is quite a time after you wrote this original post but I had to come back and comment here. You see, I recently watched a 1940 Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray Christmas film called “Remember the Night”. This movie, obviously, was made in the height of the production code…but there was prominently featured a cow’s udder in one scene. When I saw that the first thing I thought of was this article. What do you think would account for that being shown if it was supposedly ‘prohibited’? Did someone (I’m not saying you) just make that up? I know that on the web rumor can quickly become truth.
Kind of you to remember this article so long after the fact, Audrey.
The tidbit about Joseph Breen’s aversion to the display of udders comes from Thomas Doherty’s biography of Breen, Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration. It is not a Web rumor!
The prohibition on udders is not found in the Production Code. It is from a memo written by Breen. Doherty doesn’t date the memo; I have no idea when or for how long the policy had sway. Here is the text from the memo as Doherty gives it:
Interestingly, the very next paragraph in Doherty’s book reads, “Inevitably, even the Breen Office nodded,” and he goes on to document how filmmakers slipped suggestive and racy material past the censors—often when Breen was traveling on business, on vacation, in the hospital, etc. So it’s quite possible that onscreen udders slipped through even while prohibited by Breen’s memo.
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