Friday, September 16, 2011

Womanly virtues friday

Do you have nude photos of yourself on your phone?
While, ah "researching" for this morning's post, I also clicked on a link about the recently leaked photos of Scarlett Johansson's breasts.

Anyway, the folks over at How About We ... think we should stop blaming the victim when celebrity photos get leaked this way. Or do they? I mean, they could be that stupid but I doubt it. If I told them I'd left a case of liquor on the front seat of my unlocked car and someone had stolen the booze, I'm sure they'd have no trouble seeing that I'd done something stupid even though it is primarily the thief's fault. It's not like there isn't tons of evidence that this is an incredibly risky thing to do.

Bad risk assessment skills pretty much defines celebrity. No well-adjusted person would act the way they do. Any time you find yourself behaving in ways that celebrities behave, you should worry.

But what exactly is the problem? The temptation is to think that celebrities want the photos to leak. I don't think that is the case. Having seen them (yes, I peaked) the Johansson photos are not the sort you'd leak. And if Johansson had decided that she wanted nude photos of herself out there for publicity reasons, she could easily have arranged to have them taken and leaked. Heck, she could have taken a whole bunch on her cellphone and deleted all but the most flattering. Or, for that matter, she could have convinced herself to do a movie role where nudity is required for "artistic" reasons.

No, what characterizes these photos is not the exhibitionism but the poor impulse control. Put an easy to use phone with a camera in the hands of a female celebrity such as Scarlett Johansson and she will take nude pictures of herself. This scenario has happened so often now that we can safely conclude that the only reason we don't have nude photos of every single female celebrity in existence is because the hackers haven't figured out how to get into every single one of their phones yet.

In Johansson's case, I suspect the impulse that drove her to take the photos was insecurity. They aren't the sort of photos that you take to sext someone but the photos you take way wondering if you still have it. She took these photos for the same reasons that guys sometimes measure their erections.

But what about women who aren't celebrities who, for whatever reasons, take nude photos of themselves? Or, what percentage of women in general have the same poor impulse control celebrities have? Probably a lot. The subtext of the How about we ...piece is that it's normal to do this and it probably is pretty common. As I've said before, a good way to think of celebrity is on analogy with lottery ticket buyers: everyone who buys a lottery ticket is stupid even though some people win lotteries. The additional point here, is that there thousands more losers than winners and there are thousands of women you've never heard of with nude photos of themselves on their cellphones for every celebrity.

Okay, but is it normal? Sort of. Let me put it this way, I bet there are many more women with nude pictures of themselves on their cellphones than there are men with the same. I'm certain this is the case because most women have a strong need for validation of their sexual worth. This need is much stronger than their need for actual sex. That is why women behave and dress the way they do. Pulling your camera and taking a picture of yourself is just an extreme manifestation of this impulse.

The problem is not having the impulse but being unable to control it. The folks at How About We ... follow the general feminist prescription that no one should be able to criticize women for doing what women tend to do. And they are right ... to a point.

There is a place to draw a line, however.

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