The Internet is going crazy over a massive leak of hacked celebrity nudes, including those of Jennifer Lawrence. I can’t help but take it personally – as a woman in a world that shames women for our sexuality while lauding men for the same – but also as someone who knows that J-Law and I would be such good friends! We’re both super down-to-earth and awkward, and I know if we spent some time together we’d be two peas in a pod.
Which is why I’m pledging not to look at her nude photos, trusting that as our friendship deepens, there will come a day when Jen suggests (of her own free will, sickos!) that we pop our tops off and compare boobs side-by-side. Maybe her car will break down outside my condo and she’ll come up to the fourth floor and ask to use my shower, and then casually stroll out naked afterwards and ask to borrow some clothes too because she just loves my style! However J-Lala decides to share her nudity with me, it won’t be via some crass violation of privacy.
Sad, horny dorks are trying to defend themselves with the excuse that she shouldn’t have anything on her phone she doesn’t want the world to see. Once again, the onus is placed on women to accept this kind of personal violation as a way of life. But I know victim-blaming is no excuse for creeping on her private photos, when I could just wait for the weekend we end up sharing a room in a mutual friend’s quiet lakeside cabin, and she suggests sleeping naked because it’s “just so humid!”
Sure, she’s a public figure. And she’s shared so much with us – her snarky realness, her fun clumsiness, even her incredible acting talent– that it’s easy to forget she’s a human being, and not public property (I mean, I’ve never forgotten that she’s a human being, and she’s really going to appreciate how chill and unfazed I am when we first meet).
But for those who need a refresher in basic human dignity, repeat after me: the only way you should be looking at a woman’s naked body is if she explicitly invites you to look– maybe while you’re racing go-karts, for example, and she decides to lose some wind resistance by removing her loose-fitting blouse, because she knows she can trust me. You. Whatever. My point is, there are many acceptable ways to see Jennifer Lawrence nude with her consent, because we’d be cool like that.
Maybe she’ll play a fun prank where she comes up behind me while I’m pouring out oats for our horses or something and yells “Hey! The monogrammed go-kart I bought you is rolling downhill, you’ve gotta go catch it!” Then when I whip around to save it, that adorkable goofball is standing right there flashing me her boobs! Just some hilarious prank like that – what’s important is that it’s consensual.
Another consensual thing could be a night where we both go on bad dates and afterwards she’s crying a little and says “well at least we have each other” and then suddenly there’s a tension in the air and we’re like “what the hell” and we just go for it. Actually she’d probably say “what the fuck” because she’s got such an adorably relatable, filthy mouth! God I love her so much. She’s my best friend but that’s all, and I’ll see her naked as an organic outcropping of that friendship, not as a consequence of being a sweaty perv who thinks I’m entitled to her private life. Which I am not.
