Last weekend, we were celebrating a win for women when it came to sexual harassment online. With the news that cyberflashing would be included in the Online Safety Bill, Emily Atack – who wrote about her own experiences of cyberflashing as part of Grazia’s campaign – should have felt freer than ever.
But lo and behold, the actor and comedian has been subject to further vile attempts to objectify her just days later – this time even sanctioned by an official porn site. After posting a picture of herself in the back of a taxi on Instagram – a sweet selfie of Emily enjoying the sunny weekend - she immediately became subject to vile memes.
‘Looks like Charlotte from the Inbetweeners has had quite a dramatic career change,’ read one meme, alluding to the idea that Emily had become a pornstar for Fake Taxi – which produces explicit videos of porn actors having sex with taxi drivers. Fake Taxi then went on to share the meme, captioning it ‘Somebody tell Emily Atack that she forgot her purse’, even tagging her in the post.
‘Oh good so this photo is now on the actual Fake Taxi Twitter and website,’ Emily told her Instagram followers when she saw the image had gone viral. ‘Trying to have a wholesome Sunday and I’m being bombarded with perverts asking if I’d like to accidentally take a wrong turn into the woods. Go iron you kids school uniforms you pricks.’
Grazia has reached out to Fake Taxi but are yet to receive a reply.
It’s an upsetting development at a time when we should be hopeful about the future of women’s experiences online. In publishing the Online Safety Bill, ministers promised that women’s safety would be prioritised when it came to sexual harassment and trolling content online.
Emily has been subject to that her entire career, writing for Grazia last year ‘I receive countless abusive and sexually charged messages every single day. At first, I tried to simply laugh it off. But it’s just not funny anymore.’
One would hope that opening up would make a difference, that when a woman chooses to bravely share the experiences that made them feel unsafe, they are listened to. Alas, that was not Emily’s experience.
‘I was shocked by the response,’ she said. ‘While I was met with supportive comments from those who were clearly decent and respectful individuals (men and women alike), I was also met with comments from many men who couldn’t hide their anger and bewilderment. Don’t I deserve this kind of treatment, they said. Why was I moaning about it? After all, I am a blonde who has posed in lads’ mags and played Charlotte “Big Jugs” Hinchcliffe in The Inbetweeners – how could I not expect this kind of behaviour from men online? I would like to say things got better after I wrote that article – in fact, things actually got worse and I’m getting more sexually abusive messages than ever.’
Emily has reinvented herself so many times in order to be seen as more than just an object of male desire.
We know from Emily’s raw honestly in her pieces for Grazia that these kind of memes and comments make her upset, unsafe and make her question herself. How then can anyone go about laughing at these memes, let alone creating them, or sharing them with a larger audience? This is the kind of reaction that justifies ‘lad banter’, the same form of ‘comedy’ that diminishes the traumatic impact of sexual harassment and diminishes women to sexual objects. It perpetuates a culture that allows men to catcall, harass and when escalated, abuse women.
And it’s all because Emily is seen as a fair game victim. But why? Because she once posed for sexy magazine photographs (that, I might add, wouldn’t be far from what post people post on Instagram now) and played a character that was constantly reduced to a sex object? We know that Emily switched up her entire career in order to escape the way she was constantly sexualised in the public eye. And that’s what makes this all the more sad, because she’s tried to reinvent herself so many times – as women often do – in order to be seen as more than just an object of male desire, yet no one will let her move on.
It should never have been the case that Emily’s sexual agency was taken from her, that her confidence and love for her body was turned into something perverted used to diminish her talents as an actor. And now? Even after she has tried so hard to prove herself beyond that, it shouldn’t be the case that said perversion is celebrated with memes and tweets that we know she would hate.
Let Emily Atack move on from the box men put her in, she should be able to post a sweet selfie without being objectified.
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