By Siera Schubach, Staff Writer

Published in print Oct. 29, 2014

This article is the third in a three-part installment by Schubach on women’s role in media and pop culture.

In recent months some of the most famous women in Hollywood have had their most private possession leaked to the world: their naked body. Online trolls leaked hundreds of photos of famous women on the image-sharing site 4chan.

This story became one of the most talked about news events of the past month and numerous jokes circulated at the expense of these women. Some stars denied the legitimacy of the photos, while others called for legal action and some remained silent.

Reputations are fragile things, especially in the internet age where everything posted online seems permanent. These women, whose naked forms were displayed for the world to see, will forever have this incident attached to their name. With this label comes public shaming and the brash statement that these women “should have known better”. This is the same logic hurled at victims of sexual assault; that they were “asking for it”. Blaming the victim is never okay.

This idea also stems from the notion that fame means transparency, suggesting that whatever a famous person does is open for the public to know. To live in the public eye is to be without secrets. Famous or not, there is an amount of privacy in life that should be preserved. If a woman takes naked photos of herself those belong only to her and the person she chooses to share it with, as does her actual body.

The 4chan users who leaked and viewed these naked photos did not respect the female forms they saw. They ruthlessly shared and commented on them as if these women were not real. They instead saw these women as objects to be ogled.

Yet in many ways, this should come as no surprise. From magazines to children’s toys, women are constantly objectified and sexualized in media. According to a study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, women in film are twice as likely to be shown in sexually revealing clothing as men. More disturbing is that movie audiences seem to get confused between actor and character, leading to the notion that if a woman is objectified on screen, it must be okay to objectify the actress who plays her in real life.

Even more disturbing perhaps is the backlash women receive who voice their concerns about this objectification. After her “HeForShe” campaign speech, actress Emma Watson was threatened with the exposure of nude photos. These were empty threats but the fact remains that someone thought a threat such as that was acceptable because they disagreed with Watson’s feminist stance.

This mirrors the threats that were hurled at Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu for their criticism of the depiction of women in video games. 4chan users even took to twitter, creating fake accounts specifically to “infiltrate feminist movements” and harass female users. Whenever a woman stands up and objects to a mainstream patriarchal view, she is immediately threatened with sexual violence or exposure. This is beyond disturbing.

The act of objectifying a person removes their humanity. Whether it’s women objectifying themselves for the gaze of a man, or video and film creators sexualizing female characters to the point of objects, the process is wrong.

All of the women whose naked bodies were leaked online have been violated. We should definitely blame the hackers, but we as consumers and creators must also realize the impact we have on the media world.

If you, reader, have learned anything from this three-part series I hope it is this: objectification and over-sexualization of women in media doesn’t just stay on the screen or in a game. It has real-life consequences.