Four years after pictures of Orlando Bloom paddle boarding naked emerged, his fiancee Katy Perry has explained that it all came about thanks to the fact that he just wanted to fit in with the locals__. The new comments have brought the eternal debate back into our consciousness: to Google, or not to Google.
When the pictures came out in 2016, Sophie Wilkinson wrote the following.
What’s that paddle-boarding over the glinting blue seas? Is it a monster, or is it Orlando Bloom’s entire naked body, ferrying girlfriend Katy Perry to and fro the Italian coastal shores of our dreams?
The latter, as various newspapers’ front pages would tell it: 'SWORD OF THE RINGS' yelped the Sun, while the Daily Star led with: 'BLOOMING OARSOME ORLANDO.' As crass as the puns and the whole paparazzi-shots-as-news thing are, at the very least both papers bothered to plop a little censoring on the images; using a black censor box and a blushing emoji respectively. At the same time, though, they’ve stirred some very brazen desires. Right now, people across Twitter, not content with using their imagination while glaring at the patch of skin on Orlando’s thigh seemingly blackened by the shadow of his manhood, are demanding access to the uncensored images.
Late last night ‘Orlando Bloom unsensored [sic]’ was a suggested search term. And then there are the memes:
But unless you’re Katy Perry, or happy enough to spend your precious time on this earth scurrying around to find an uncensored Orlando’s penis, you won’t see it. And it should probably stay that way.
If you can take your mind away from that shadow for a second and cast it back two years ago, when over 100 female celebrities’ iClouds were hacked, and slews of naked photos of them were released all over the internet. This incident was nicknamed #TheFappening by 4Chan, the forum that first disseminated the images, because ‘fap’ is onomatopoeic slang for wanking.
Jennifer Lawrence, perhaps the most high-profile woman to be exposed (apart from Kim Kardashian, whose leaked nudes were glossed over because, apparently she’s cool with this sort of thing by now. She once said she was almost glad her dad had died before the sex tape of her and ex Ray J was leaked, so I’m guessing she’s not) was, obviously, unhappy about it. She told Vanity Fair: ‘It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It's disgusting. The law needs to be changed, and we need to change…Anybody who looked at those pictures, you're perpetuating a sexual offence. You should cower with shame. Even people who I know and love say, “Oh, yeah, I looked at the pictures.” I don't want to get mad, but at the same time I'm thinking, I didn't tell you that you could look at my naked body.’
Now, you may say, there are differences between the two situations. Jennifer Lawrence’s photos - just like those of the dozens of other women who were violated - were taken within private property, whereas Orlando is in the middle of the sea, where laws might not even apply! JLaw’s photos were explicitly sexual in nature, there for the enjoyment of her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Hoult, while Orlando’s just a naked guy, using his naked body to do something of its naked own e.g. paddleboard. While the famous women’s photos showed them as passive receivers of sex, Orlando’s an active participant, doing something un-sexual with his body, right? Of course, you can try to justify it any way you like. You might even use the flimsy justification that, hey, this isn’t par for the course for men, and that guys get to be on front pages for things other than objectification by the mass media, so this is a little bit of reverse-sexism, and maybe quite deserved? Yeah, well, that’s why it’s called ‘revenge’ porn, and in fact, today, of all days, The Daily Mail has put a topless David Cameron on its front page!
Whatever Orlando’s doing, and however de-sexualised his nudity might seem, the public desire to see the photos of a naked celebrity is universal, no matter the target of our desires; either a non-sexual or sexual curiosity to discover something we’re not really allowed to see. 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.’
It’s another shame that, four years later, this quote is still so relevant. If anyone feels like Orlando is lucky because men’s parts are less shamed, in general, than women’s parts, less pored over, misunderstood and ridiculed, then you’re right. But the solution to a problem that has left many women - and men - across the world feeling violated and traumatised - revenge porn can have long-lasting damaging psychological effects - isn’t this. If you think you’ve got a moral excuse to right wrongs done to women by looking at wangs, well, you’re going to need a man with a pretty massive paddle to get you out of that creepy creek.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.