We all have our pet peeves; loud gum chewers, slow hallway travelers, or bunchy underwear. Mine happens to be pictures of naked babies in mall kiosks. Babies should not be displayed in the nude. I don’t care if you’re trying to show the purity of newborns or you just want to stick your naked baby in a cornucopia for some Thanksgiving festivity. The fact of the matter is, that it’s just plain strange. I’ve never understood why you can’t just slap a diaper on the kid. No, a fig leaf obscuring their minimal genitalia does not count. This isn’t the middle ages! Most parents would never allow their children to run around in their birthday suit, so why would it be okay for all the creeps in the mall to see their little baby behinds?

Just last weekend I was walking through the Coral Ridge Mall, having a grand old time shopping ‘til I dropped, when I stopped, as if stuck in a pit of sticky slime. There, displayed predominantly in the middle of the main walkway, was a portrait of some poor “sleeping” baby, completely nude, with its tiny baby foot covering its privates. Why in the world would that make me want to get a portrait done? When is the cut-off age for mall kiosk nudity? One year? Two? Who’s to say that I can’t go down to that place right now and demand to have a picture of myself stuffed in my very own cornucopia?

Perhaps instead of nude infants, they should display portraits of happy kittens dressed as businessmen, or Golden Retrievers in raincoats. Animals dressed as humans or not, this bizarre habit of Iowa mall kiosks must be stopped, or we are at risk of soon seeing some hairy, 42 year-old man with a bunch of alphabet blocks as a censor bar in a gaudy, gold frame as we frequent our favorite stores.