Announcement: Reversion of Blog Policy

I'll be getting to my week-long look back at Maria Hanson soon enough, but first, an announcement involving my criteria for this blog is in order.

In February 2015, I decided to change the raise the minimum age for women who appear on this blog from eighteen years of age to twenty, explaining my reason as follows: "It has come to my attention that some people may be uncomfortable with eighteen years as the minimum age of women who are chosen for this blog, and even though eighteen years of age is the age at which legal adulthood is conferred, I've concluded that that's too young."  This recently inspired one Caitlin S., a visitor to this blog, to leave the following comment on the post announcing that change: 

"With all due respect, why do you need an age-limit of any kind, let alone to raise it to twenty? Why can't you celebrate the beauty of women of all ages? Some people may indeed be 'uncomfortable' with celebrating the beauty of eighteen and nineteen-year-olds  . . . but some people are anal imbeciles. Aesthetic appreciation of beauty is not necessarily sexual, for one thing, and even if it is -- are we supposed to pretend that people under twenty or eighteen are asexual?"

After some self-deliberation, I have decided that Caitlin S. is partly right.  I think it's inappropriate to feature here anyone under the age of eighteen, because . . . well, it just is.  A lot of people would find that creepy, and, quite frankly so would I.  But featuring young women aged eighteen and nineteen seems appropriate enough, provided it's in the proper context:  take, for example,  my use of a picture of an 18-year-old Mariel Hemingway in September 2015.  As noted then, I'm four years younger than Ms. Hemingway, so a picture of her at eighteen is still a picture of an older female from my original, fourteen-year-old male perspective. And yes, there are some young women from generations that have come after mine whose pictures I could certainly post pictures of here, if only because people of those generations who might want to check out this blog have an interest in these younger women, just as Generation Xers like myself and Baby Boomers have an interest in the older women I feature here.  

(You're probably wondering why I raised the minimum age to twenty rather than, say, twenty-one.  That's because I had once featured a picture of a twenty-year-old Kim Alexis - who's five years older than I am - and I wanted the rule to cover that.)

So, after a couple of days of consideration, I've decided to go back to a minimum age of eighteen in my criteria.  I know I can't please everyone, and Caitlin S. might not be entirely happy with the fact that I have an age limit at all . . . but there you are.  At least this change back will allow me to feature pictures of women who are older than I am when they were eighteen, and without apology. 

Right, a week of Maria Hanson photos is coming up . . .