As with some of you, I was mildly bothered by the image in question, so I asked myself "why?"
It's not a moral issue with me -- I've seen much "worse," so it's really about something else.
I thought about how the ancient Greeks handled this issue in sculpture -- after all, they set the standard for depicting the human body, and established artistic conventions that survive today. They obviously felt that while you should depict human gentalia, you shouldn't be too realistic about it. Grown men were given the genetalia of children, and women's genitals were more or less simplified.
Why did they take this approach? They certainly weren't prudes. Maybe they felt that the genitals represented some lesser human function, or maybe they felt that genitals attract more attention than the more noble aspects of the human body -- I don't know.
But my conclusion is that when we come across a more-or-less "classical" image of the human body --of which this is an example -- we somehow expect it to follow the conventions. When it doesn't, it jars our sensibilities and something seems out of place.
That's my "take," for whatever it's worth.
Marco
