As an avid Snapchatter, nothing frightened me more than reading this headline on Facebook: “At Least 100,000 Snapchat photos hacked.” Reports claim that the majority of the photos stolen include nude images and videos. I heaved a deep sigh of relief since my Snapchats mainly contain triple chins. A picture of me stuffing my face with Oreos and a caption stating: “typical Friday night #collegelife,” would go unnoticed. Unfortunately many people do not have that assurance.
Snapchat is a messaging platform where users send captioned photos to friends. These images only last for a certain number of seconds before disappearing, but receivers can screenshot images to save them.
US News claims that 4chan, the same website that exposed the recent nude celebrity photos, houses these stolen Snapchats. Apparently, hackers created a database for users to search the Snapchats by username. The photos were stolen from third-party website Snapsave.com. Snapchat itself released a statement that their official servers remain untouched by hackers. This is not the first scandal surrounding the popular application. In January hackers released 4.6 million names and phone numbers of Snapchat users.
The problem extends beyond SnapChat. Jennifer Lawrence recently spoke to Vanity Fair about nude photos that went online without her consent, saying: “It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. 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.”
Just like celebrities, normal people have limited control over what happens to their bodies on the Internet. When services like iCloud and Snapsave.com fail to protect user data, online communities attack the men and women in the images for their “stupidity,” saying that they should not have taken the photos to begin with. However, things go wrong on the Internet, no matter what security precautions may be in place. Taking the photos does not pose the problem; they belong to the people who take them, not to the public, but unpredictable Internet breaches lead to major mistakes. One of these constant mistakes lies in society placing blame in the wrong people.
You thought I was lying, didn’t you?
Alarmist responses to the leak criticize our society’s “degrading promiscuity,” saying nude SnapChats speak to an amoral or overly sexualized society.
True, we have adopted sexy selfies as casually as we embrace Starbucks or Apple products, but a recent experiment shows that teens who sext are only 1.32 times more likely to engage in further sexual acts than teens who don’t sext. While sexting may slightly increase the likelihood of teens engaging in sexual activity, it certainly does not provide the powerful causal force for which it is criticized by conservative adults. Sexting is not nearly as much of a problem as our fear of it.
American culture’s rejection of nudity causes us to dismiss, even despise, the human body. We cannot embrace the beauty of a person’s body, so we master our fear by turning it into an object. I think that a broader social misunderstanding of sexuality cheapens its value. This ultra-conservative attitude inadvertently causes the disgusting dehumanization displayed by criminals like the SnapChat hackers.
The people who scavenge for stolen nude photos really do not care less about the kid who fell asleep next to you in class; they want only “dick pics.” The images sickeningly dehumanize people’s bodies, utilizing them as nothing more than an object.
To be sexual does not make one a “whore” or a “slut” or any other damaging slur. To embrace sexuality means to be in touch with one’s body and one’s intimate relationships, and taking nude photos is merely a mechanism of this expression. Sending nude photos to someone one trusts does not indicate one’s inherent “slutiness,” but rather that one trusts themselves and their partner(s).
I do not even believe that sexuality necessarily means that one participates in sexual activity; just confidence and positive self-esteem can attune one to their sexuality. In the same interview with Jennifer Lawrence, the actress says that she sent nude photos to her boyfriend because: “I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you.” Nude photos do not have to be crude; they can be sensual. They do not have to be disgusting; they can be sexy. Instead of continuing to accuse these photos of perpetuating corrupt morality, we need to encourage people to be proud of their bodies.
Instead of celebrating our bodies, some people use sexuality as a weapon. When scandals unwillingly expose people, some find this as a prime opportunity to judge and criticize others. Some say things like: “they shouldn’t take these photos to begin with” and “it’s their fault for sending them.” This idea that it is the victim’s fault for other people’s hacking perpetuates that somehow sexuality is something to frown upon. Blaming the victim does nothing more than injure them and condemning, laughing, or mocking someone’s nude photos only demonizes sexuality.
I am not encouraging people to look at these nude photos and I am not justifying the work of the hackers for releasing them. Invading people’s privacy remains a serious offense. I feel utterly horrible for the thousands of violated, exposed, and humiliated people affected by this Snapchat scandal. Celebrating sexuality does not make the fact that this occurred all right. Looking at these photos publicly online does not encourage sexuality; it mocks and dehumanizes it.
The kind of sexuality that I celebrate is private. It is loving, compassionate, intimate, sensual, and consenting. We need to embrace the nude selfie, but we also need to embrace people’s right to send them privately to whomever they desire. By continuing to shove sexuality into the background, unwilling to talk openly about it or to embrace it, we allow these scandals to occur because we skew our perception of sexuality. We need to reveal sexuality—including nude photos—and the true beauty it holds in order to begin understanding the boundaries within which we should act.
I worry about what this means for my beloved Snapchat. I worry about what this means for the thousands whose privacy was breached. I worry about what this means for the archaic sexual ideals we hold on to as a society. It is time to take a stand against battling those who embrace their sexuality and instead embrace our own. Does this mean that we should all send out nudies after this Snapchat leak? Probably not right away, but instead of vilifying the victims of this scandal, we should focus on changing the attitude toward sexuality for when this inevitably occurs once again.
Image source: localtvkfor.files.wordpress.com, www.gamefaqs.com and www.pcworld.com
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