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Authors: Nancy Jo Sales
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given that “lewd” images of children are being distributed, albeit by the children themselves, thereby putting others at risk for being in possession of what is defined by the law as child porn. But the policing of sexting has drawn criticism in recent years. Minors being “prosecuted under child pornography statutes for producing or sending images of themselves or other minors…is not the proper use of child pornography prosecution, nor is it a solution to the problem of minors sexting,” said an article in the University of Michigan
Journal of Law Reform
in 2014.
In
The
Atlantic,
writer Hanna Rosin depicted the busting of a teen “sexting ring” in Louisa County, Virginia, in 2014 as much ado about nothing. The case involved a high school in which a group of boys had posted more than 1,000 nude and semi-nude photos and videos of girls, ages about fourteen to seventeen, on Instagram, without the girls’ knowledge or consent. In her piece Rosin described the Instagram page as looking like “a porn site”; but in an interview on NPR, she maintained that the naked images of the girls were equivalent to “baseball cards or Pokemon cards” to the boys, a kind of “social currency” for them, “more than…a springboard for fantasy.”
“There’s so much free porn out there that these pictures serve a different role,” Rosin said. “These guys look at these pictures for five seconds. They’re just not that big of a deal to them. And so sending them along is kind of fun…It seems like a prank.”
But if the circulating of nudes is a prank, then it’s one that has had some tragic consequences. In 2008, Jessica Logan, an eighteen-year-old Cincinnati girl, hanged herself after her ex-boyfriend shared nudes of her, and she was labeled a “slut” and a “whore.” In 2009, Hope Witsell, a thirteen-year-old Ruskin, Florida, girl, hanged herself after a boy she liked shared nudes of her.
When the actress Jennifer Lawrence’s nudes were hacked, in 2014, she labeled it a “sex crime,” and many people were inclined to agree with her assessment. The danger that sexting may result in cyberbullying, or “revenge porn,” the nonconsensual sharing of nudes, has been established in many studies. Sexting has also been linked to “sexual objectification and violence, to risky sexual behavior, and to negative consequences like bullying by peers,” according to an article in
Cyberpsychology
in 2014; and yet, despite evidence of its negative impact, the article went on, “a normalcy discourse is appearing in the literature that interprets sexting as normal intimate communication within romantic and sexual relationships, both among adults and adolescents who are exploring and growing into adult relationships.”
In other words, teenage sexting has already come to be viewed as normal. Movies and television shows have portrayed teenagers sexting as something romantic and cute, like a kind of cyber-hickey. On an episode of
Keeping Up with the Kardashians,
teenagers Kylie and Kendall Jenner giggled at sexts they found on their mother, Kris’s, phone, sexts allegedly sent to a younger man. Even as prosecutors try to make an example of sexting teens, sexting is all but accepted as social behavior.
“How to Take a Tasteful Nude Selfie,” said a post on Allure.com in 2015 (“Highlight your best bits”). There’s even a kind of nude selfie feminism. Comedian Amy Schumer seemed to equate nude selfies with female empowerment in a 2015 tweet: “…Spend less time worrying what others have and focus on getting what you want #dicks #nudeselfie”; as did
Rookie
magazine founder and actress Tavi Gevinson in 2013, when she was seventeen, and tweeted: “…as long as there are reddit threads of secret shots of girls’ butts,” meaning leaked nudes on the social networking site Reddit, “let them selfie their own butts.”
But some girls and young women aren’t comfortable with taking or sharing nudes, as routine as
Journal of Law Reform
in 2014.
In
The
Atlantic,
writer Hanna Rosin depicted the busting of a teen “sexting ring” in Louisa County, Virginia, in 2014 as much ado about nothing. The case involved a high school in which a group of boys had posted more than 1,000 nude and semi-nude photos and videos of girls, ages about fourteen to seventeen, on Instagram, without the girls’ knowledge or consent. In her piece Rosin described the Instagram page as looking like “a porn site”; but in an interview on NPR, she maintained that the naked images of the girls were equivalent to “baseball cards or Pokemon cards” to the boys, a kind of “social currency” for them, “more than…a springboard for fantasy.”
“There’s so much free porn out there that these pictures serve a different role,” Rosin said. “These guys look at these pictures for five seconds. They’re just not that big of a deal to them. And so sending them along is kind of fun…It seems like a prank.”
But if the circulating of nudes is a prank, then it’s one that has had some tragic consequences. In 2008, Jessica Logan, an eighteen-year-old Cincinnati girl, hanged herself after her ex-boyfriend shared nudes of her, and she was labeled a “slut” and a “whore.” In 2009, Hope Witsell, a thirteen-year-old Ruskin, Florida, girl, hanged herself after a boy she liked shared nudes of her.
When the actress Jennifer Lawrence’s nudes were hacked, in 2014, she labeled it a “sex crime,” and many people were inclined to agree with her assessment. The danger that sexting may result in cyberbullying, or “revenge porn,” the nonconsensual sharing of nudes, has been established in many studies. Sexting has also been linked to “sexual objectification and violence, to risky sexual behavior, and to negative consequences like bullying by peers,” according to an article in
Cyberpsychology
in 2014; and yet, despite evidence of its negative impact, the article went on, “a normalcy discourse is appearing in the literature that interprets sexting as normal intimate communication within romantic and sexual relationships, both among adults and adolescents who are exploring and growing into adult relationships.”
In other words, teenage sexting has already come to be viewed as normal. Movies and television shows have portrayed teenagers sexting as something romantic and cute, like a kind of cyber-hickey. On an episode of
Keeping Up with the Kardashians,
teenagers Kylie and Kendall Jenner giggled at sexts they found on their mother, Kris’s, phone, sexts allegedly sent to a younger man. Even as prosecutors try to make an example of sexting teens, sexting is all but accepted as social behavior.
“How to Take a Tasteful Nude Selfie,” said a post on Allure.com in 2015 (“Highlight your best bits”). There’s even a kind of nude selfie feminism. Comedian Amy Schumer seemed to equate nude selfies with female empowerment in a 2015 tweet: “…Spend less time worrying what others have and focus on getting what you want #dicks #nudeselfie”; as did
Rookie
magazine founder and actress Tavi Gevinson in 2013, when she was seventeen, and tweeted: “…as long as there are reddit threads of secret shots of girls’ butts,” meaning leaked nudes on the social networking site Reddit, “let them selfie their own butts.”
But some girls and young women aren’t comfortable with taking or sharing nudes, as routine as
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