About a year ago, Playboy model, Dani Mathers was charged with ‘invasion of privacy’ for uploading an image of a 71-year-old woman, naked in her gym with the words ‘if I can’t unsee it, you can’t too.’ Mathers has now been ordered, by a judge, to spend 30 days cleaning graffiti in Los Angeles as her punishment after pleading no contest to invasion of privacy to a LA County Superior Court.
The worrying thing here is, Dani Mathers isn’t the first, and she won’t be the last person to stranger-shame. A phrase we’re becoming all too familiar with a society, stranger-shaming is all too real and social media apps Snapchat and Instagram are giving up a platform to share to the masses. Mathers apologised for her cruel comments, claiming that she intended to send the photo ‘privately to a friend, but then accidentally posted it publically. But the underlining issue here is, even sending it to a friend privately, is shaming a person you’ve never even met.
It’s all too easy to snap a photo of a stranger’s dog, or shoes you might find ‘weird’, pop a caption you might find humorous on it, and off it goes to your best friend who you just know will get a lol out of it – but when did we all become so high school? When did we shame random people for their outfit choices, their bodies or their hair? It feels like we’ve taken a giant leap back to year 7 where it was cool to make a joke out of someone’s last season wallabee loafers
The Facebook group, Women Who Eat on Tubes, highlights just how common this is. Designed to publicly humiliate women who eat in public while on transport, without their permission, the group has over 12, 000 fans and is filled with unkind comments. Debrief writer, Sophie Wilkinson, even received more than 12, 000 abusive comments after her picture was uploaded to the page. That very picture was literally her eating a salad on the Metropolitan Line, which sounds pretty mundane (sorry, Sophie) if you ask me. Yet uploading it to Facebook opened it up to a whole world of malicious comments that were both unwelcome and unwanted.
Then there’s the Tumblr page, Men Taking Up Too Much Space On The Train, it’s sole purpose in life? To spread images of men, funnily enough, taking up too much space on trains. I even laughed when looking at it, it is funny – but why do I find it so hilarious to see images of unknowing men sitting with their legs spread far apart? And why do we need a whole Tumblr page dedicated to humiliating them? To me it feels like because we’re all so connected all the time, we’ve become so noisy we just need to see exactly what’s going on, all in aspects of life. I don’t even care about these man-spreading men, yet I was intrigued to keep scrolling. The Facebook page, Rate My Meal Deal also draws on this idea that we’re all inherently noisy. We like commenting on things that have nothing to do with us, we like being a part of something bigger.
Social media is growing so rapidly that now we don’t even need to upload an image to a Facebook group – we can directly send it to one person, or multiple at the tap of a Snapchat button. We can even record video if a photo won’t suffice. So, where do the boundaries sit? What is, and isn’t OK to send on social media to your mates?
As far as Dani Mather’s case goes, the idea of shaming someone’s body, regardless of it being meant for private purposes, just shows how judgemental we all are. As we mentioned before at The Debrief, this despicable move could destroy someone’s body confidence that so many of us work to build up. As a society, we will always ‘shame’ others, whether it’s on purpose or not. It may come in the form of scanning over websites that claim celebrities have cellulite, or it may be commenting on someone’s outfit choices on the sly to a mate. Yet it’s important to remember here that we have a responsibility to think about what we’re doing, what we’re saying, and what we’re sharing on social media. Snapping someone’s outfit choice, meal preference or body to then mock it on social media isn’t cool. Humiliating a person you’ve never met is mean, remember that, guys
You might also be interested in…
This Model Shaming Another Woman Proves How Judgemental We All Are
Dani Mathers Could Face Jail Time For Her Body-Shaming Gym Snap
How One Woman Eating On The Tube Got Me 12, 000 Online Haters
Follow Alyss on Instagram @alyssbowen
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.