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| Narcissus by Caravaggio |
On one side of this battle is Team Proper, who seems most outraged that beautiful and fit young people are having their gorgeous and nubile bodies photographed in the first place. The horror of it all! And since these "heathens" have transgressed the rules of morality, decency and the Costco One-Hour Photo Center, they deserve whatever hellish fate awaits them. As I've read in tweet after tweet, "If you can't stand the hackers, then keep your naked selfies off the cloud."
On the other side is Team Privacy, who believe that this is the greatest invasion of privacy since that Brady Bunch episode where Cindy kept reading Marcia's diary. Sure, for the last 10 years, the NSA has been reading our e-mails, recording our phone calls and hiding under our beds while we make "whoopee" with our spouses, significant others and people we just met on Craigslist (hey, I'm not judging). But when hackers start posting nude pictures alongside the sex tapes from which many of our celebrities gained fame in the first place, we need to amend the constitution to add an amendment respecting the sanctity of the nude selfie.
Yet, in all of this intellectual debate, everyone seems to have missed the major issue -- that celebrities have nude pictures of themselves on their own cellphones. Let that sink in for a second. Apparently, these celebrities are so in awe of themselves that they have the need to view their own naked bodies on a fairly frequent basis. And since it isn't always acceptable to get naked in public, they keep a stash of photos on their phones so they can get a quick fix of their own nakedness whenever the cravings become too strong to resist.
As I see it, this is the issue that should draw our attention away from war abroad and racial tensions at home. Apparently, our most important and revered citizens don't have the mental faculties to remember what they look like naked. For most of us, this is not a problem. In fact, we have just the opposite problem. I'd give almost anything to be able to forget what I look like when I step out of the shower. In fact, if I ever meet the "genius" who decided to line an entire wall of my bathroom with mirrors, I'll be writing the rest of this blog from prison.
The inability of celebrities to remember just how hot they are probably explains our failing education system. How can we possibly expect young people to remember, say, the major topographical features of the Galapagos Islands if they can't remember what they look like naked? Even more, it demonstrates that we are not teaching our young people an even more important tool for success -- plausible deniability.
Even prior to the recent Celebileaks, the Internet was teeming with images that purported to be nude pictures of various celebrities. For instance, purely for the sake of journalism and at great personal sacrifice, I just typed "Jennifer Lawrence Nude Photos" into Google Images. The search returned a disturbing number of hits, almost all of which predate the recent release of her cellphone pictures. In other words, the Internet already contained countless fake pictures of Lawrence. When the new pictures were posted, she could have very plausibly denied their authenticity. Or to put it in language that celebrities can understand -- all girlfriend had to say was, "Those are fake!" Or perhaps even better, she could have responded by saying, "I'm not even going to dignify these allegations with a response."
However, to do so, would have required that she and the other affected celebrities exercise something that seems to be in even worse shape than their sagging memories -- modesty. In other words, for Lawrence and others to deny the pictures, they would be denying that those beautiful bodies belonged to them. Instead, they were willing to endure the indignity of being literally laid bare before the entire world, so long as they got to claim their "hotness." Or to put it in celebrity parlance, they said, "There is no shame in my game. I'm all that!"
In a Greek Mythology class that I slept through in college, the other students learned the story of Narcissus. For those of you who had the good sense to schedule an afternoon class on the topic, you remember that Narcissus met his demise when he came across his reflection in a pool of water. He became so enamored with his own beauty that he eventually committed suicide in despair that he could never truly possess the object of his heart's desire -- his own reflection. I'm sure that there is a lesson for all of us to learn as it relates to hacked celebrity nude selfies, but unfortunately, I slept through my Critical Reasoning classes as well.
