By Robin Gracia
Managing Editor
Lights, camera, topless selfie. Sending and receiving risqué messages and photographs, or “sexting”, is becoming the new normal amongst millennials. Taking racy or nude photographs is seen as a thrill – with naked pictures, videos and sexualized texts being used as personal pornography. But how private are those pictures?
As it turns out, your privates aren’t nearly as private as you think.
“Girls I talk to send me nudes if I ask for them sometimes,” said Mark Robertsen, 23. “It’s really hot. I save all those pics, they go into my ‘spank bank’. If a chick is super-crazy hot, though, I’ll show a friend or two, but only if I’m not too serious about her. If she’s girlfriend material, or like, I am pretty interested in her and it might go somewhere, I can’t be showing her tits off to my boys.”
A “spank bank” is a collection of photographs and videos a person possesses to use as masturbatory material. With more than 89 percent of college-age individuals admitting to having sent or received a scantily clad or full on nude photograph, there’s a chance a photo you have sent has been saved – or shared.
“It will be a cold day in Hell before I ever send another nude,” said Jacqui Parson, 27. “An ex-boyfriend traveled a lot for work, and he’d call me up and ask for me to send him some pictures so he could get off… We split up about six months in. No big deal. A couple weeks later, a mutual friend calls me up, and tells me that my ex put my pictures online. I called the cops, and they said they had no legal recourse, because those pictures were his property and I wasn’t a minor…
“I had to call him up crying and begging before he took them down… I don’t know how many people saw me naked, or saved those pictures… It was violating.”
According to a 2014 poll conducted by Cosmopolitan, 9 out of 10 millennials have taken nude photographs of themselves either partially or fully nude. Of the 850 poll participants, with an average age of 21 years old, 72 percent of individuals felt fine about their decision to show their bodies, and 14 percent of people said that they regretted taking the pictures.
When the poll asked if they would take nudes again, 55 percent said they would and 26 percent said yes, but only if they were not recognizable in the photograph. Only 10 percent declined baring their birthday suits again for the camera. But some people find it liberating, even artistic.
“My body is awesome,” said Brandy Flemming, 23. “I am very body-positive, and I feel empowered when I take pictures of myself in a way that makes me feel sexy. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Becoming the victim of revenge porn, like Parson, is not as uncommon as one would assume and it can cost you – literally.
Sites such as UGotPosted.com, which have been taken down, would blackmail men and women whose photographs had been uploaded without permission to the tune of thousands of dollars. Personal information would also be displayed next to the pictures.
However, the law is starting to catch up with creeps.
According to an article written by Elisabeth Ponsot on PBS.org, Kevin Bollaert, the owner of revenge porn sites UGotPosted.com and ChangeMyRepuation.com was found guilty on 27 counts of identity theft and extortion in Feb. of 2015. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris said, after this ruling came out, that sitting behind a computer “will not shield predators from the law or jail.”
Sexting seems innocent enough. Realize that trying to play it safe and sending nudes through Snapchat because they will disappear can always be saved as a screenshot. Digital can live forever. Be careful when sexting, or better yet, save all that sexy time for when you’re in person – cameras off.
