By Alyssa Haddad
Staff Writer
If you haven’t seen or heard anything about the celebrity nude photo scandal recently, you’re probably 90 years old and don’t own a TV. On Sunday, Aug. 31, several female celebrities, including Kaley Cuoco, Kate Uptown, Jennifer Lawrence, and Victoria Justice, were victims of a security hack on Apple’s iCloud that included private photos containing nudity. The photos were leaked on the imageboard website, 4chan, and were found by major media outlets.
People had varying reactions to the scandal, but mostly they were along the lines of:
“These women are such sluts.”
“They deserve this for not being more careful.”
“This kind of thing would never happen to me.”
“Who cares that their pictures were leaked? It doesn’t affect me and they love the attention anyway.”
These are all false concepts, and they call to attention the vulnerability of all of us at the hands of technology. The nude pictures that were leaked were an extreme breach in privacy for many people, only a few of which happened to be A-list celebrities and therefore, of actual interest to the general public. Unless personal pictures of yourselves bottomless Winnie the Pooh style were a part of this hacking, you’re probably unlikely to care. However, this should trouble all of us.
The fact that many regular people were affected means that it was just a matter of luck of the draw. Hypothetically, these normal men and women could have been married, in long-distance relationships, or newly single and sending pictures in an effort to hop on board with this century’s way of expressing their feelings: through a screen.
For the famous few females who were victims of the hacking on Sunday, many are quick to slut-shame and degrade them for what they planned to keep out of the public eye. Whatever the case may be, for the lucky celebrities whose phones were hacked, it doesn’t matter the situation in which they decided to send naked photos.
These confidential pictures were sent in private, quietly from one person to another, with no intention of them ever being seen by anybody but the expected recipient. The notion that successful actresses like Kaley Cuoco are not intimate with their significant others, in Cuoco’s case, her husband, is outrageous and downright delusional. In an industry whose slogan is “sex sells” why are we okay with seeing women like Ariana Grande, another casualty of the leak, singing about sex, but when stolen naked pictures of her circulated she was called a “whore.”
Famous women, and women in general, should be allowed to express their sexuality privately without scrutiny and fear. As consumers of Hollywood culture, we are already too invasive of the personal lives of celebrities; from paparazzi waiting outside of their houses to US Weekly knowing the relationship status of every moderately famous person of the last 20 years. However, the line of what we have access to should undeniably be drawn at their personal technological devices and the messages that they send.
The now realistic possibility that a stranger can tear down our private walls, security settings, and all locks and break into our cell phones is incredibly frightening. For those who are quick to say, “This scandal doesn’t matter, it doesn’t affect me,” I beg to differ. If the phones of celebrities, who have staff hired to protect them from scandal can be broken into what’s to stop a hacker from breaking into your phone and taking your bank information? It’s extremely unsettling for those of us whose lives are inside of our phones or computers; basically everyone, and there’s no way to be sure that you are safe from this potential threat.
Why is it unanimously immoral for somebody to steal someone’s money or material possessions, but it is the fault of the victim when their personal pictures and feeling of security are taken away?
If a person were to break into Jennifer Lawrence’s home and steal a naked polaroid picture, there would be no doubt that she was wronged, but why is the situation considered less serious when that same picture happens to be seen on a screen? Instead of asking why these celebrities were not more careful of the pictures that they thought were safe from the rest of the world, we should be questioning how safe our personal information is, and if we’re next.
