Stephanie Seymour Photos Aren't Incestuous

The media is in a tizzy over the pictures of bikini-clad supermodel Stephanie Seymour frolicking on the beach with her “young, handsome, impeccably torsoed” … son. Immediately, websites and commenters alike were referring to their “incestuous” behavior, without stopping to consider that maybe Seymour was simply “engaging in innocent maternal affection,” writes Mary Elizabeth Williams on Salon, noting that Seymour was on a family vacation at the time—and the son in question is openly gay.

Peter Brant II has already shot back at critics, calling their embrace innocent. It’s sad, Williams concludes, that “even with America's bottomless appetite for skank, we possess some unbelievably repressed attitudes toward genuine physical affection. We'll Google ‘nip slip’ all the live-long day, but freak out at a son brushing a hand against the side of his mother's bathing suit top.” How many of us, she wonders, can even recognize genuine “familial warmth”? Yes, a teenager willing to embrace his mom is sadly rare—"but that doesn't automatically make it weird or gross or creepy.” Click for her whole piece, or to see one of the slightly more controversial photos.
(More Stephanie Seymour stories.)