Show Me!: Difference between revisions

Show Me! is a controversial sex education book by photographer Will McBride. It appeared in 1974 in German under the title Zeig Mal!, written with psychologist 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. In Germany, the book was followed in 1990 by a second edition that included, among other additions, a discussion of the AIDS epidemic.

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

However, starting in 1977, some states began to criminalize the distribution of even non-obscene "child pornography". New York, 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. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in 1982, New York v. Ferber[1], which allowed the government to constitutionally ban the knowing distribution of even non-obscene "child pornography". St. Martin's Press then pulled the book, stating their belief that the book was not pornographic, but they could no longer afford the legal expenses to defend the book. (Since the book had lost First Amendment protection, its enemies would have likely renewed and expanded their court challenges). Used copies remain freely available, though at inflated prices.

A recent 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."

D. F. Janssen, in Growing Up Sexually. Volume II: The Sexual Curriculum: The Manufacture and Performance of Pre-Adult Sexualities (Oct., 2002) [2], places it at one extreme of a late 20th c. 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 for the primacy that image takes over 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.

1. 1974: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern Foreword by Helmut Kentler. Wuppertal
2. 1975: Show Me!: A Picture Book of Sex for Children and Parents St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-72275-3
3. 1990: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern (2nd. ed.) 195 p. Wuppertal: Hammer. ISBN 3-87294-301-4
4. 1995: Zeig Mal Mehr (5 ed.). 176 p. Beltz. ISBN 3-407-85106-5

• Seattle Public Library banned books list
• Amazon book page
• New York Times article discussing the withdrawal of this book
• St. Martin's Press, Inc. v. Carey, 440 F.Supp. 1196 (SDNY, 1977)