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.
