ABSTRACT
The ultimate male “hard body” is Michelangelo’s marble David, sculpted in the first years of the sixteenth century and now displayed in the Galleria dell’ Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. But if, like most American men, you prefer casinos to museums and Las Vegas to Tuscany, you can see a full-size reproduction of David (and a lot of other familiar statues) in Caesar’s Palace. In fact, in one respect the Nevada copy is larger than the Italian original. Fearing the notorious puritanism of postwar Americans, the management at first had placed a fig leaf over David’s crotch; but when highbrow purists and prurients looked up and were robbed of the expected sight of those famous male genitalia, they complained about the censorship of Michelangelo’s masterpiece. Realizing that people willing to play slot machines and watch scantily clad dancers might be less inhibited than other Americans, management had the offending fig leaf removed. However,
some customers then began to giggle, because the leafless David’s cazzo was obviously, by modern American standards, a little…well, little. Underendowed. The customer is always right. So the statue was taken away again, and David was given a couple of extra inches where it counts.
