UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN asleep for the past few days, you’ve probably heard that Orlando Bloom was out on a paddleboard in the nip with Katy Perry.
On Wednesday, censored paparazzi photos of Bloom were published in numerous media outlets and last night, uncensored versions of the same photos were published and circulated on social media.
But for every person expressing delight at the big reveal, many are uneasy about the photos, particularly as they were presumably published without Bloom’s consent.
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People have drawn parallels between it and the 2014 leak of nudes belonging to female celebrities.
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Emma Blackery / Twitter
Emma Blackery / Twitter / Twitter
Others have noted that there is a key difference between Orlando Bloom’s nudes and the photos leaked during the so-called ‘Fappening’ – Orlando Bloom was naked on a public beach while the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Kaley Cuoco had their nudes scraped from their personal devices without their permission.
(That’s not to say it doesn’t represent a violation of privacy. It’s just not quite as sinister as the latter incident.)
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All that said, it’s reasonable to feel uncomfortable about the manner in which the nudes have been presented.
Last night, The Mirror informed readers that they could “choose the censored or uncensored version” and created a nifty flip graphic.
While female celebrities are traditionally subjected to horrible levels of scrutiny from the tabloid media, it’s hard to imagine mainstream news sites encouraging readers to flip a graphic to see an uncensored paparazzi shot of, say, Katy Perry without being (justifiably) criticised.
So just because Orlando Bloom is a good-looking man doesn’t really make it okay.
As The Debrief wrote:
Yes, Orlando’s a celebrity and he’ll gladly strip off for magazine shoots and make money off of the fact he’s a very beautiful person. But he’s also entitled to a private life and we all need to ask ourselves why we’re looking so hard to dismantle that. In 2012, when asked on a talk show about a paparazzi up-skirt taken of her, Anne Hathaway responded: ‘I was very sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of someone in a vulnerable moment and rather than delete it and do the decent thing, sells it. And I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants.’
Food for thought before you tweet ‘YASSSSS’ and link to the photos.
