[Gendergap] Pregnancy article lead-image RFC

[Sue Gardner]

On 6 September 2011 00:04, Arnaud HERVE <arnaudherve at x-mail.net> wrote:
> I think that for medical articles, all the relevant body parts must be
> fully exposed. And believe me I have seen much worse than a healthy
> pregnant woman, because i do website editing for a faculty of medicine.
>
> In that case the part to be expose would be the whole swell of the
> belly, from pelvis to thorax. Including the breasts is ok to me.
>
> Showing that part exclusively would not only be more medically relevant
> (because thighs and neck are not relevant here), it would also make the
> person non identifiable.
>
> The clothed photograph seems to me more improper than the nude one for a
> medical article. If it is medical, then the body part must be exposed
> without clothes. Even if it might sound surprising, I also disagree all
> photographs showings hands on belly, nude or clothed. I acknowledge that
> it shows the mother's care, but for medical purpose it is the belly
> alone that must be shown.


This is really interesting, Arnaud. I take Ryan's point below about
whether pregnancy should be framed and understood solely as a medical
condition, but it strikes me reading your post that there is a whole
world of expertise in the medical space about how best to display
human physiology for neutral informational purposes. I wonder if we
currently tap into that expertise at all, anywhere in our projects.
I'm sure there are codified best practices --more comprehensive
versions of what you outlined above-- that would be useful for us.

This is interesting to me because in my personal use of the projects,
I have very rarely been offended, but I have occasionally been
startled by what seems like incongruous or inappropriate imagery.
Basically, an overrepresentation of images used for educational
purpose, that include elements or signifiers often associated with
porn, such as breast implants, long artificial nails, hair extensions,
waxing [1] ... which has a weird sexualizing effect on the article,
which I have found distracting or perplexing.

It seems to me that if we had access to the kinds of best practices or
guiding principles used in the medical profession, that might give us
some guidance for how to select images that are optimally neutral for
educational purposes. Because as your note implies, that expertise
does already exist.

Thanks,
Sue

[1] It's probably because those images originated as porn, either
amateur or professional, and have been repurposed for use on our
projects. As Jimmy has sometimes said, Commons has a supply-side
problem not a demand-side problem. If we have an over-supply of porny
imagery, and an undersupply of good neutral imagery, porn will get
used for educational purpose.