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Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

They should ban it just because it's a poor image. The colors are unnatural, it is low resolution (blurry) and has a bunch of weird line noise, it's just not representative. The obsession with sticking to it has always seemed odd to me.

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ethically sourced https://mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/

from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35010229

Thank you! I couldn't stop laughing for a good minute.

I thought the thread could use a little levity.

I 100% respect Lenna's wishes to stop using the image. I have a small tinge of regret based on some of the comments in the subthread, but it is for the better.

I even own a copy of the Playboy this was taken from, but funny thing is, I have never opened it. It is on my shelf next to the Utah Teapot. I guess in a way, I could justify it as one less use of the images.

You're probably jesting; but it'd be more representative of the computing industry if we used a picture of a male. It is an interesting philosophical question of whether that would be an improvement.

I think the most appropriate response to this kerfuffle was when an all-female team of researchers published an image processing paper... using Fabio as a test image.

That was a great paper

Stable image reconstruction using total variation minimization

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Stable-Image-Reconstru...

To be blunt, male don't feel threatened by a poster of a manly topless macho. It won't incite inferiority complex, at least not by much. Else The Terminator would offend and upset a shit ton of men, and it would been a very unpopular movie. So why should it be suddenly problematic the subject of a poster had assumed certain gender that isn't men? If it's biological, why can't it be said? Is arachnophobia and ophidiophobia shameful to admit too?

> To be blunt, male don't feel threatened by a poster of a manly topless macho. It won't incite inferiority complex, at least not by much.

Oh man, if only this were true.

Because "feeling threatened" is not what this is about, so your point is meaningless. It's dishonest to make up stuff.

The issue with Lena is objectification, the equivalent male photo would be like a picture of the chest of a bodybuilder.

Well ... it wouldn't. It'd be a bodybuilder shot cropped to the head. The shot, as used, isn't objectification. The original would have been, but it isn't used - because, I would suggest, of the objectification issue.

agree. even at its low resolution the lack of high frequency detail is noticeable, and the color is awful

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