Imagine sending your boyfriend a sexy photo and then the next thing you know that photo is on the internet for hundreds or thousands of people to see. Revenge porn has increased along with the surge of social media and this is happening to young girls every day.
Kim Kardashian built an empire based on the emergence of her sex tape. MiMi, from the reality show Love and Hip-Hop, released a sex tape as well. In Kim Kardashian’s case, supposedly the release of the tape was a mistake. MiMi’s tape was intentionally released by her and her partner for capital gain. Recently a video went viral of Blac Chyna, a former stripper who is now highly popular on social media, performing oral sex on a former partner of hers. Previously, her ex-boyfriend Rob Kardashian posted nude photos of her to the internet because of an argument they were having.
Young people are increasingly exposed to graphic sexual content due to its accessibility on the internet. Mimicking celebrities, girls and women take nude photos of themselves and send them to their boyfriends. When the relationship goes south, these young men often grow angry and release these photos on the internet through social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter.
Sometimes, girls will even release nude photos of their peers simply because they do not like them. There are specific pages on Instagram and Twitter devoted to exposing young girls. Not only cruel, this practice is also illegal.
Sandy, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym due to the sensitive nature of the topic, is one of these girls. She was in 8th grade at the time and was in a group chat on Instagram with three other guys. One of the guys was dating a girl who was only in 7th grade. They had been arguing so he thought it would be funny for Sandy and the other guys participating in the Instagram chat to create an Instagram page to post nudes of his girlfriend. Sandy created the page and after he sent the nude photos of his girlfriend in the group chat she posted one of them onto the page.
“Me being dumb… I just posted it. I just didn’t like her,” she said. “She knew it was me because I guess her boyfriend told her. He tried to blame everything on me… We was being evil, I don’t even know why.” The victim told her mom, who brought the incident to the principal’s attention the next day. “The one that I posted she had a thong on. You really could not tell it was her,” Sandy said. “The next day the rumor was that she had created the account herself to post her nudes. I told one of my friends I felt so bad that I had did that. Next thing I knew I heard my name on the loudspeaker.”
When Sandy was called to the office she had to explain her actions to the principal, assistant principal, her mom and police officers, who were present because this act is considered child pornography. “She looked sad all day,” Sandy said of the victim. “After I felt bad. When you’re doing something you may not feel that bad but after, it’s like ‘Damn, I really just did that?’ Her eyes were puffy and red and her cheeks were too.” Sandy was suspended from school for a week, lost her phone privileges for a week, and was grounded for a month due to her actions.
Listen to Carla tell her story . . .
On the other side of the equation are the victims. Carla, also a pseudonym, was 14 years old when her boyfriend posted a nude photo of her on Instagram. “I was asleep and I just wake up to all these text messages of him just accusing me of talking to other guys. We were already bumpy because he had been cheating on me over the summer. He said he was going to expose me,” she said. “He posted the picture on Instagram and I asked him if he could take it down. At this point I’m not even me anymore, like I’m totally broken down emotionally, like my heart was just broken.”
Carla texted her boyfriend and he didn’t reply. He then asked her to stop texting him. “I felt so betrayed,” she said. Back at school everyone hated him. They were commenting under the picture “take it down.” The photo was a picture of her standing in front of a foggy mirror, with just enough of the steam wiped off the mirror to expose her breasts. He was threatening to post more pictures.
Carla felt sick to her stomach. She did not go to school for a week. She laid on the couch all week, unable to eat due to how nauseous she was over this. Her boyfriend eventually texted her apologizing, expressing how much he loved and missed her. She took him back but they later broke up, prompting him to post another picture on his Facebook cover page.
This time it was a picture of her naked, from behind, lying on the bed. Carla didn’t react and he eventually took it down. She no longer speaks to him and like many other victims of revenge porn, she never pursued legal action.
