I admit it – when I heard there were nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence floating around online, I looked. After learning how they got there, I felt ashamed.
Is there a natural curiosity when it comes to seeing a woman naked, especially an attractive one? Yes. Always. Even though women’s bodies are all variations on a theme, there is still temptation to see what each of them looks like.
This cloud hacking stunt is some disturbing business though. Peeking into someone’s private moments has never turned my crank, whether it’s “leaked” sex tapes or recorded phone calls. I tend to lean toward my own privacy so I’m not a fan of violating someone else’s.
On a certain level, I don’t think we’re fazed by the term “hack” in the way we once were. It’s a word that now gets thrown around in many aspects of daily life – food hack, life hack, pet hack. It’s almost as if we embrace the idea of “cracking” something and finding what is hidden inside, and these liberal uses of the word seem to soften what it means to us.
Some are quick to say that if these women didn’t want their naked bodies spread all over the internet, they shouldn’t have taken the photos in the first place. Just to be clear, they didn’t do anything wrong. It is absolutely okay to flirt and be sexual with your significant other, and in an age where there is a camera on everything in your pocket (excuse the lint), it’s realistic for sexy photos to be taken and sent to your partner. The notion that celebrities sign up for this or other undue levels of attention is ridiculous. It’s no different than saying you can be exposed for everything you search for and post because you’re on the internet, especially in an era when everybody is so up in arms about their privacy being protected. Apparently, that doesn’t apply to those with even a slight degree of fame. It cracks me up how concerned so many are with keeping their information private in between posting drunken selfies and TMI status updates.
Imagine some random nobody found a love letter you wrote your high school boyfriend/girlfriend back in the day, scanned it, and posted it on Facebook. Now imagine that letter was “shared” millions of times. Feels awful, doesn’t it? You shared something private with another human being and some asshole put it out there for all to see. The embarrassment would cripple most people. You might say my comparison of baring your emotions isn’t as extreme as baring your body but it’s a toss up as to which one you’d rather have exposed to the universe, especially for men (can you say “biased?”).
The person or group who got hold of these photos undoubtedly hoped the men of the world would praise and thank them for showing us the boobies of coveted females, but instead, they’ve created a tremendous amount of anger. They took away what was special about these photos, along with the intimacy meant to be shared by couples. It shouldn’t be okay for their privacy to be violated simply because they’re hot and famous.
Ultimately, I think this incident will make everyone think twice about taking and keeping sexy photos on their mobile device. In fact, I guarantee thousands upon thousands of photos were immediately deleted from phones around the world in light of this, because none of us want to share in the embarrassment of these women. What should be good, clean fun between consenting adults is now a cautionary tale for the rest of us, which is a shame since safe pleasure is what we all want without the lingering threat of exposure we can now plainly see.