Sheer is not a dress color

Apparently this passes for "dressed" these days...

As you all know, I will forever lust after an invitation to the Met Ball and obsessively study and adore the outfits of all the fancy people who are actually lucky enough to attend, but this year I must lodge a complaint. Attention all ladies: Sheer is not a dress color!

I have the utmost respect for women who rock bodies so hot that clothing should be optional and I fully support women with a daring fashion sense, but there is a difference between sexual/risqué and nearly naked/lingerie. As fashion has embraced sheer fabrics, plunging necklines and cutouts in all sizes and locations, I've found myself longing for the days when red carpets meant elegance and risky choices still involved actual fabric. Lately, it would seem that the more naked you appear, the better and while I would give ANYTHING to look like those ladies (and even if the Met Ball is a place for daring and costume-eque outfits) it seems ridiculous that these women feel the need to reveal so much at a red carpet event. Is this what high fashion is now? Is that what is required to turn heads? I don't know how we got here, but sheer is not a dress color and I think it's time my famous lady loves remembered that!

The Naked Truth.

In the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, the always candid and seemingly awesome Jennifer Lawrence sounds off on the hacked nude photos scandal that recently swept pop culture. She says: 

"Just because I’m a public figure, just because I’m an actress, does not mean that I asked for this... It does not mean that it comes with the territory. It’s my body, and it should be my choice, and the fact that it is not my choice is absolutely disgusting. I can’t believe that we even live in that kind of world. It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting. The law needs to be changed, and we need to change. That’s why these Web sites are responsible. Just the fact that somebody can be sexually exploited and violated, and the first thought that crosses somebody’s mind is to make a profit from it. It’s so beyond me. I just can’t imagine being that detached from humanity. I can’t imagine being that thoughtless and careless and so empty inside.” - Vanity Fair

I agree with a lot of what J. Law is saying, but not all of it. What I don't agree with is that she didn't "ask for this". She did, but not because of her celebrity... Jennifer Lawrence "asked for this" the moment she decided to take a nude photo with a mobile device. A mobile device, linked to a mysterious cloud, notorious for security breaches for as long as humans have been suckered into using it. I don't care if you're a school teacher or a housewife or an Oscar winning actress, the moment you decide to take a photo of yourself with a device that's connected to the internet, you are accepting the completely plausible risk that the photo will be viewed beyond your control. To revise the above quote, "It comes with the territory. It’s your body, and it's your choice." 

We humans are a voyeuristic folk, but we live in a culture where people expect privacy in a place where it's never successfully existed. Do you actually understand "the cloud"!? Do you really believe that Facebook and Apple, Amazon and Google aren't exposing us all to privacy breaches, all the time? And the worst part is that there's a generation of teenage girls growing up in this world who really, truly don't seem to understand the permanence of these privacy breaches and how incredibly probable they are to occur. How could they when even Jennifer Lawrence doesn't?

I agree that taking nude photos is a private decision we're all entitled to make and that having others look at or commercialize what they know was intended to be private is slimey... but maybe instead of pointing the finger outward, we should think twice about using a system we cannot to control to share information we never want to lose control of.