If you’ve been living under a rock then you’re a very weird person. But, I can see past that, and would ask if you have heard what is on every teenage boy’s mind right now…
THE FAPPENING!!!
Yes, apparently some hackers got ahold of naked pictures taken by various female celebrities that had automatically been uploaded to Apple’s iCloud. Now, when it comes to me, this makes me quite a bit less attracted to these ladies, because I am strictly a Google fanboy, but the fact remains that 4chan and Reddit have gone ateship over these photos. In fact, you’re probably wanting to see them right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
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Back? Now, wasn’t that fun? Some people are saying that by looking at these photos you are worse than Hitler (paraphrasing here, but only slightly), but I can’t help but forgive curiosity, despite its criminal history involving a cat. Why am I not judging the hackers that leaked the photos, or the naked lady celebrities that took them?
Human nature*.
First off, people will always take naked pictures of themselves. If you think this is a recent phenomenon, well, you’re cute, but I need to tell you how the world works. Some of the first photographs ever taken were of naked ladies, and sometimes people who weren’t supposed to saw them.
And second, hackers gonna hack. As a (reformed) cracking enthusiast I will say there are few things more fun than getting access to something you are not supposed to, especially when you have arcane knowledge of various computer systems and can exploit them like it’s your superpower. If there are naked pictures of Kate Upton on the other side of the login screen then that just sweetens the deal.
In fact, naked pictures of Kate Upton seem to be the best reward for an awesome hacking job – those are worth going Black Hat for, undoubtedly. While most websites, infrastructures and tech companies will pay handsome sums of money to anyone who can exploit holes in their security, I would agree that yeah, naked Kate Upton would be way better.
But then, who do we blame? I mean, this is a scandal, right? (It isn’t.) Someone needs to be the bad guy here, right? (No, they don’t.)
If anyone is deserving of scorn here it is a large segment of the population of the United States. Quite possibly you, true believer.
Let’s look at the facts here – the celebrities are being blamed for taking the photos. Apple is being blamed for a security flaw. And, of course, the hackers are being blamed for leaking the photos. But all in all this shouldn’t even be newsworthy.
In most of the civilized world the human body is beautiful. Sadly, the United States has had a history intermingled with puritanical thought. We act like sex is a horrible, bad thing, and then associate nudity with sex, even though you can sexualize most any image – case in point, Mormon Porn.
A photo of a lady showing more than what society deems acceptable is no more sexual than one of her adhering to society’s standards. Perhaps the photos were taken to titillate (one of my favorite words), but at the end of the day it’s still the human body, it’s still beautiful, and it’s up to you if you sexualize it or not. On the other side of the coin, it shouldn’t be a “scandal” if someone sees your body – we are all human, we are all made of meat, and we are all attracted to some configuration of said meat. Many people have seen the meet that makes up Kevin Awesome, and many more will, I am sure. I am not ashamed of my meat at all, and I wouldn’t even call attention to said meat, should photos taken in meatspace be leaked all over the internet. Well, unless said meat made me tons of money and/or got my music out to other meat people.
Sexualizing someone’s photos doesn’t make you a bad person – sex isn’t inherently bad, despite what a good portion of the population in this country would tell you. If anything, it empowers a human being – sexuality is raw power. So much stock is put in people with high sex appeal (and I’m not just talking about yours truly), to almost such a degree that I would postulate that the reason why some put down others for being sexually open is that they are threatened or made to feel inadequate, because they don’t possess the sex appeal that they wish they had.
That idea of being threatened extends even to the world of comic books**. Recently a variant cover (not even the standard cover) of an issue of Spider-Woman was lambasted because of how she was posing; Maddox’s Best Page in the Universe covered this better than I ever could. What I will add, though, is that sexuality is the ultimate Rorschach test (hurm…), and it reveals a lot about ourselves. When we see something meant to be sexual are we repulsed, or do we see beauty in it? When art has themes of nudity, are we angered at the artist for making something cheap, gaudy, or tasteless, or are we transfixed by the sheer artistry of the human body? And when Kate Upton has some grainy selfies leaked of her ample bosom and perfect butt and shapely hips and… I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten what I was talking about…
*Great, now I have the Human League’s “Human” stuck in my head. Actually, it’s a pretty good song. You should listen to it. I’ll wait.
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Such a good song, right? You’re welcome.
*Yes, I found a way to shoehorn a the subject of comic books into a blog post on naked Kate Upton. I am nerdy and a little ‘spergy.