Busted! Chesty mermaid splashes debate

Single complaint over 'Siren' sparks obscenity alarm

A sculpture of a mermaid in South Florida is causing debate among the public, as the cups runneth over on the artwork.

At issue is "The Siren," a piece created by artist Norman Gitzen, now on display at the Wellington Community Center.The mermaid will surface at next weeks village council meeting, after a single phone call by an anonymous woman was received at the town's switchboard. "If they find her obscene, are they saying all large-breasted women are obscene?" Gitzen asked the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "The world is full of large-breasted women."

Gitzen thinks he may have even been modest when creating the chest of the figure, and he's looking for an engineer to determine if the breasts are proportional to her 10-foot-tall, 6-foot-wide stature. Gitzen says such an analysis could find his work "underboobed." Vice Mayor Lizbeth Benacquisto apparently has no problem with the mermaid, as she noticed it as a work in progress at the Wellington Art Society's annual Art Walk."Something about the piece sort of calls to you," she told the paper. "She's just so comfortable with herself and her form. It's just something very moving for me as a woman. The comfort of her with herself, I thought was great.

And she's got a lot to be comfortable with."Local resident Anita Nebb is OK with the statue, noting "Some people say they should cover the breasts. Let them go to the museum. Some people want to bring up their families with blinders on."