Pictures of Naked Women on Snowboards Causing First Amendment Issues in Vermont

I haven't been snowboarding lately (okay, ever, but what's your point?) but apparently the youngsters are buying some interesting boards lately. No, not the sixties psychedelic patterns or ones featuring a pot leaf. No, the kids today are opting for nudity. Specifically, pictures of nude young women that they stand on as they fly down hill. The problem? Families with young children who might be skiing nearby are not particularly happy seeing this images, but the young men claim they are just expressing their First Amendment rights. Sounds like a great case for the Supreme Court to me! Below, a PG-Rated version of what you might see on some of those snowboards.
Here's more from the Boston Globe:

For Nicole Zarrillo, seeing a snowboarder with one of Burton Snowboards' new Playboy designs at a Vermont ski slope underscored the reasons why many Vermonters - including her boss - are protesting the new men's snowboards.
When you really think about it, it's a young man standing on top of a naked woman's body," said Zarrillo, 38, an office manager for a nonprofit based in Burlington, also home to Burton's headquarters. "I probably could have gotten past it, because I try to have an open mind, but seeing it like that, it's offensive."

Burton Snowboards, located in Vermont's largest city since 1992, cemented its reputation among Vermonters as a progressive company through employee benefits such as matching child-care payments and paying for half of a worker's gym membership. Yet the company has found itself at the center of a growing controversy in the liberal state, with residents, students, and politicians debating free speech and sexism on the ski slopes. The Burlington City Council discussed asking Burton to withdraw the boards, and the Girl Scout Council of Vermont is considering taking concerns to lawmakers next month.



The outcry hasn't made a dent in sales of the new lines, Burton cofounder Jake Carpenter told the Burlington newspaper Seven Days in November. The Playboy line, called Love, and a second line called Primo, which depicts mutilated hands, have "completely oversold by virtue of this exposure," he said. The debate has split Vermonters along a number of lines. There are parents who don't want their children to encounter the images at the state's family-friendly slopes; young snowboarders who cite right to free speech in buying the boards; and politicians who fear the criticism might drive Burton, one of the city's biggest employers with more than 500 Vermont workers, to move its headquarters elsewhere.