One of the more persistent and incoherent arguments in the wake of the celebrity nude hack of 2014, popped up again on Tuesday when Jennifer Lawrence's topless Vanity Fair cover story was released (she had posed for the magazine a month before her photos were released). The argument goes something like this — if Jennifer Lawrence (or any other celebrity) is posing topless in spreads for magazines, why is she so upset when her private nude pictures are hacked?
Jennifer Lawrence posed topless. It doesn’t give you the right to her private nude photos.
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.
Felix Salmon, a journalist and usually pretty nice internet being, tried to make this flawed point on Twitter, highlighting a quote and pointing at the topless Lawrence photo that accompanied the story:
(Twitter)
Salmon isn’t the first person to make this point. Kate Upton has posed topless (her hands covering her breasts) for Vogue and in bathing suits for Sports Illustrated, Rihanna posed nude on the cover of a French magazine this year, and you’ll often see celebrities in nude shoots for high fashion magazines.
But the point that Salmon missed is that the difference is consent. Salmon realized his mistake, and said he is leaving the tweet up for “shame” purposes.
OK, apologies. My bad. Leaving it up for #shame purposes
— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) October 7, 2014 Lawrence, in her interview with Vanity Fair, says the photos are a sexual offense.
“I didn’t tell you that you could look at my naked body,” she tells the magazine.
When celebrities pose for magazine photo shoots, they’re in control of the images being produced and how those images will be distributed. Lawrence posing nude or topless in a photoshoot (usually with some artistic purpose) doesn’t give anyone the right to see the actress’s private photos without her permission. She is not an object to be passed around.
The idea that women’s sexuality belongs to them, and that they are sexual beings, are not hard concepts to grasp.
That’s what makes Vanity Fair’s accompanying photos and cover shot so appropriate and powerful. Here is Jennifer Lawrence embracing her sexuality, in control of her body. This is what she’s allowing you to see. She owes you nothing more.
Why can’t people seem to wrap their heads around that?
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