Caitlyn Concha | Contributing Writer

On Aug. 31, nude photos of some of the most famous American celebrities were leaked onto the World Wide Web, flooding our Twitter timelines and Facebook newsfeeds. Racy pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, Lea Michelle, Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, and countless other celebrities were all the buzz. Photos of Jennifer Lawrence reveal her posing in intimate positions and topless selfies were taken by Kirsten Dunst. Celebrities saved these pictures on their phones or uploaded photos to their iCloud. They were then stolen by the “4chan hacker”. This hacker published pictures on the sites Reddit and 4chan which then spread to social media sites.

Just recently there have been more celebrity nude photo leaks published on the internet. Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and Amber Heard’s naked pictures are among the most recent of the explicit photos shared on the web.

I think this is a big infraction of privacy. Celebrities are constantly in the public eye, being bombarded by paparazzi. If you google any one of the celebrities listed above, you can find out their height, weight, natural hair color, if they have any piercings or tattoos, where they live, what vacations they’ve been on, and now the most intimate information of all: what their naked bodies look like.

I find it extremely disturbing that someone would take the time out of their day to hack the women listed above and about 93 other celebrities, find explicit pictures, then publish them for the whole world to see.

Many people are not defending the celebrities because as Clay Aiken said, “Anyone who takes inappropriate photos of themselves deserves exactly what they get.” However, I do not think that is the case at all. These celebrities did not take “inappropriate photos” for the public eye to see. Maybe they took these photos because they wanted to. Maybe they took these photos to send to a partner. They trusted that these photos would never be seen by anyone else’s eyes but their own or the people that they showed in confidence. They never wanted the world to see every inch of their bodies, nor did they expect to have to deal with the repercussions of owning nude photos of themselves.

A body is a body. Yes, women have boobs and yes, they have butts. Nude photos of women pop up on Twitter all the time. When these photos reached Twitter, I first saw the risqué pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, then Ariana Grande’s nudes, then Victoria Justice’s. I was appalled at the way people were talking about them. Guys were fawning over them and girls were criticizing these women. I read a lot of tweets which critiqued their bodies, shamed them for taking such photos, and degraded them for having taken these photos. My initial reaction was surprised that a lot of these celebs would take such explicit pictures. For some reason, I thought J. Law wasn’t the type of person that would do this, but then I realized she is a human, too. She makes mistakes.

We hold celebrities on a pedestal: give them unwritten rules and hold very high expectations. We expect them to never blunder. We need to realize that celebrities are human too and stop dwelling on their photos. Call the plumber, fix the leak, and carry on with your day.

Graphic by Justice Gage