Friday, August 28, 2009

Take A Lesson From Vanessa

Two local teenage boys face misdemeanor charges for "sexting." Tucson Police tell us a girlfriend willingly sent them a naked picture, which they proceeded to share, hence the charge of "intimidation and harassment through the use of a telephone."

Young ladies, I'll say this again: You never ever get nude in front of a camera, period, at any time in your life, for anybody, for any reason. It doesn't matter how much you love or trust the intended recipient of your bared body. Maybe you think a little flesh is fun and games, but TPD asks you to think a few moves ahead:
"For one, [the photo is] stuck in cyberspace and it will never be eliminated," says Sgt. Diana Lopez of Tucson Police. "For two, for those who receive it and forward it to others, you're humiliating the person who sent the photo."
Sgt. Lopez didn't mention the other gotchas like blackmail, lost job opportunities, ridicule, et cetera, et cetera, all because of a few dirty pictures.

Ask Vanessa Williams how a skin pic can come back to bite you. In 1982, she agreed to pose nude for photographer Tom Chiapel, thinking it was just for artistic purposes. She went on to win Miss America only to give up the crown in 1984 when Penthouse got hold of the photos. Williams thought they'd been destroyed. This was long before most of us knew about the Internet, and cell phones were still years away from most people's hands.

Ask yourself this question, Dearest Ladies: "Am I worth more than a nudie mag?" If you're answering "yes" to this and still hitting the send button, some seriously scrambled sentiments need straightening out.

One other curiosity: if we're going to charge teenagers with a crime for passing naked pictures around, perhaps the girls should share some of the legal culpability, if the stigma and embarrassment of this practice isn't enough to dissuade them. I'm afraid it isn't, granted the prevalence of it among our young people.

Dearest Ladies, you're not pin-up girls. You're not centerfolds. Don't act like them.

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