Inked is fucking disgusted by The Fappening
NSFW Gallery follows the text
The ice in the cooler had mostly melted into semi-chilled water and you were feeling around for the last summer brew while the biggest Internet event of the season (apologies, Tim Howard) was lighting up phones at every family barbecue.
“Is that your cousin?” was the reaction to your phone’s constant dings. “Tell him we need bug spray.”
It wasn’t your cousin; it was Jennifer Lawrence and she was nude.
“Come show your aunt pictures from your trip to Ibiza.” Nope, your mobile gallery was now sullied. One swipe too many and things would get more uncomfortable than the time you accidentally connected with a real-life friend on Tinder.
It was called The Fappening. And the only praise we’ll give to the event is that it had a clever name. If your currency isn’t karma and upvotes on Reddit.com then you may not be familiar that “to fap” is to jag off, onomatopoeically it is the sound you tried to drown out by blasting Green Day in your childhood bedroom during a session with the Sears catalogue’s bra section. Conversely, the female term de redditor is “schlick.”
The Fappening is/was a purge of stolen nude photos, allegedly of celebrities from Avril Lavigne to Winona Ryder. The aforementioned Oscar winner was on the announced list along with other bold-beautiful-faced names like Cara Delevigne, Hope Solo, Kate Upton, Rihanna and Vanessa Hudgens. The photos were/are to be systematically leaked out after supposedly being hacked from the starlets’ personal iCloud accounts.
If I told you I didn’t look I would be yanking you—and I don’t want to do be doing that in any interpretation of the idiom—but I am apoplectic at myself. Being a young(ish) single man my device has its share of libidinous photos from women attempting to entice me. For worse or better, sexy selfies are part of the dealings of the modern dating dance. As dancing has mutated from the Lindy Hop to dry-humping in clubs to Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” communicatory flirting has escalated from trying to fish for adoration through love letters scented with perfume to snaps of snappers. If my degree in Communications taught me anything—and it barely did—it is that you always have to think of your audience. The onlookers of the purge weren’t the intended audience for these photos, yet the photos still provoked unwarranted comments of “look at this slut.” A girl doesn’t blast out a prurient pic to all of her Facebook “Friends” she sends her intimate moment to the one. There is nothing slutty about that.
Mom, please stop reading now.
I am none too proud to say that I have participated in the back-and-forth of shots of our fronts and backs. On one hand, I did it for the comedy factor. A group of my closest male friends and I were thick into a bachelor party weekend in the raucous hamlet of Mystic, Connecticut when we lit out from the party house to a stuffy restaurant for an adult dining experience. The juxtaposition from anal ring toss at the rented house to the salad-forked setting we found ourselves in was giving our mind state the bends. I forget whose idea it was but one from our party went to the water closet and while in there took a snap of his scrotum and texted it to everybody at the table. It broke the artisanal ice and we spent the next few hours taking turns going to the men’s room like we still had coke habits. “You’ll never be able to be run for senate now,” a guy said to me after receiving my package. Right, like that would be the one thing that would hold me back. Through all the nastiness the beauty was that we trusted each other and knew that the pictures won’t go past the guys seated at the table, let alone were probably deleted immediately if opened at all.
The other time I participated in an exchange was with a committed girlfriend who basically offered, you text me yours and I’ll text you mine. Now, I’m not a show Dachshund whatsoever but being in the magazine biz I understand the tricks of lighting and the rule of thirds. The next day she told me that she showed her gay friend who was impressed. I was pissed and flattered and then pissed again but also a little flattered. If she had told me her intention with the picture perhaps I would have reconsidered it, but the untexted notion was that this was an intimate play between just the two of us.
So here I was looking at a photo of what may or may not be Upton sans the thin layer of body-paint that Sports Illustrated used to protect her virtue in their Swimsuit Issue. And all I could think was that this is fucking disgusting. Not the body, but that these photos were not intended for me. If Upton wanted to bare her bare body to the world she could certainly find the outlet that would do it correctly. Just because the picture exists and can be viewed doesn’t mean it should be. Even though they weren’t in the flesh but on the Internet, to look at them is an invasion of privacy akin to the hacker drilling a hole in her bedroom wall and looking through that hole. Seth Rogen tweeted: Posting pics hacked from someone’s cell phone is really no different than selling stolen merchandise. It is far worse than that.
There are plenty of nude female exhibitionists including thousands across our websites. Our girls are welcoming you to give them a twice over. At Inked we don’t coerce or exploit women, we celebrate those who want to display their sexuality in a safe environment. You want to see dream girls in the nude? Take a look at Vanessa Lake, Alysha Nett and Jesse Lee Denning—all women who willingly intended you to see them nude. Don’t be part of The Fappening, don’t be part of the theft and exploitation of their womenhood. If we ignore or fight it there will hopefully be no Hollywood Purge 2.
The post A Hacker Stole More Than Celeb’s Nudes appeared first on Inked Magazine.