I was raised by two young adults in the 90’s, so I was obviously raised listening and learning about every 90’s rock/grunge band. I’ve seen the album cover a thousand times. My dad still has an original album. I guess since I was raised seeing it, I never really thought about it being weird. Now that I’m grown with two kids of my own, I do find it kinda weird. I don’t think it’s considered Child P**n, but why a naked baby underwater? So I did some digging.

First off,

it is legal to have a picture of naked child if it’s not presented in a sexual way, and I don’t think that the album cover is sexual. Weird? Random? Doesn’t make much sense? Yes. But not sexual. I have some of my kids in the bathtub, one of when my son took his diaper off, etc. Like, normal mom stuff. But taking the picture to advertise your music, is obviously very controversial and a lot people even before this did not like it. But, ultimately they had the parents consent. And the parents were paid $200 for a photo shoot that took an hour. At this time, they didn’t know that Nirvana was going to get as big as they are. I do personally think, they deserve a fat check considering they made millions off the album.

Why did they chose a naked baby?

The reason they did it is because Kurt originally wanted a mom giving birth underwater as the album cover. But the record label told them it was too vulgar. And honestly, wouldn’t have been easy to do lol. So their photographer, who was a professional underwater photographer said that he had never shot a child underwater before. He was friends with the child’s parents and asked them if they wanted to make a quick buck and they agreed. He claims the picture represents “abandonment of innocence and everyone chasing money sooner and faster” and that it was never taken or meant to presented as sexual. Now the parents are claiming that his penis was supposed to be blurred out. Which, makes since to me. I think it definitely should have been. Even the photographer was iffy about it and actually ended up taking a similar picture of a little girl the same age so the nudity wouldn’t be as “prominent”. When he presented both images to the record label, they thought the original shot was perfect and went with it.

With Nirvana being the “edgy” band they are, I understand why they went with the picture and the representation behind it. But, still don’t understand why the baby couldn’t have his privates covered or blurred out.

I don’t understand why now, at 30 years old, the baby in the picture is just now having a problem with it. I understand why he would think he deserves compensation, a picture of him, that he couldn’t agree to, has made a group of people millions of dollars. But, considering this man has laughed about it, bragged about it, and has even done recreations of the pictures several times and has even publicly said in an interview that he doesn’t remember it. I think the way he’s going about it is wrong. I don’t think this should be considered Child sexual exploitation, I don’t believe that he has trauma from the experience. And I honestly think it’s disrespectful to people who have experienced SA and have been sexual exploited at a very young age, or any age really. I personally do believe he just wants money. I don’t think he deserves what he’s trying to get. But considering that he is on the cover, he never seen a dime of the $200 and how much the album has made, I think he deserves a little bit. If it were my band, I would have given the family a check a long time ago when they very first started making a shot load of money from it. The photographer too honestly, the photographer only made $1000 from the photo shoot. Yes, it’s the music that got Nirvana famous. But you can’t argue that the album cover wasn’t an attention grabber and majorly helped sells.