More than 100 female celebrities had their privacy invaded over the Labor Day weekend when a few hackers exposed nude photographs of said celebrities without their consent.
Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were targets of the massive cyber attack among others of your favorite silver screen starlets and singers.
What few have speculated to have started as a quick way to get money rapidly became known as “Celebgate” and “The Fappening.”
While some such as Ariana Grande and Victoria Justice have come out to inform their fans that their photographs were fake, others such as Lawrence and Winstead have confirmed their photos being genuine.
In a backlash against having her privacy invaded, Winstead took to Twitter to express her disgust.”
“To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves,” Winstead said on her Twitter.
“Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this. Feeling for everyone who got hacked.”
Although there has been outrage over the massive photo leak, many have been in favor of having the photos released.
Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton enthusiastically made the photographs available to his fans through links before Lawrence’s representatives promised to prosecute anyone who distributes her photographs.
Public hesitation to continue spreading the photographs has sparked due to legal representatives of the starlets threatening to take legal action against those who distribute and even repost the photographs, but that is not good enough.
Public hesitation should have first sparked when people heard there were private photos being released without any consent whatsoever.
It is important to support the women who were targeted in this injustice rather than support the hacker.
Instead of making matters worse by sticking some crude name to this monstrosity, we should reflect on the effects that these events have as well as show empathy for the women who have been targeted.
We need to remember that these photos go beyond just what is placed in the image, we need to remember that there are women in these photographs who have been negatively affected by some gross hacker’s greed.