More and more teenage boys are threatened using nude photos: What do you know?
Predators force financially teens, mostly boys, by threatening them with nude photos. These conversations are:
In Tiktok, women complain that their bikini has become very small. Fan-only creators like Lily Phillips have tried to have sex with 100 men in a day, but they’re viral. And parents are increasingly concerned about the threat of deep falak porn and the oversexualization of young girls.
In her latest book, “Sexy Selfie Nation,” Leora Tanenbaum, an expert and author of slut embarrassment, shares “sexy selfies,” claims that the problem lies in the conditions of the toxic sexualists they are responding to, not the young women wearing exposed clothes. She says young women are opposed to three pillars of “nonconsensual sexualization” that shape daily life, including gender dress codes, intimate image sharing (including “venge porn” and “deepfakes.”).
In “Sexy Selfie Country,” Tanenbaum talks to young women influenced by today’s culture, presenting a roadmap for parents to better understand their child’s behavior, and for women and girls to shape and share their image in their own terms and control their bodies.
This interview was compiled and condensed for clarity.
Question: In “Sexy Selfie Nation”, you tell the story of Grace. Grace’s story is 17 years old, who shared photos of her boyfriend attending a homecoming dance. She wore a short black dress and received many disapproved comments, especially from women. Why does it hurt worse if another woman turns on you?
Answer: Grace’s story is horrifying and illuminates this generational misconception. So many young women experience what Grace has experienced. I started this project six years ago. Because so many parents came to me and said, “I was saying that (my daughter) would never actually look like a woman, but between you and me, she’s dressed like a woman. I’m a feminist and I don’t want to be embarrassed about her, but I need advice.” I wanted to make sure that these parents, most of them could provide useful guidance to moms, so they didn’t want to be embarrassed about their daughters. What I found was that young women don’t try to make themselves sexual, but their parents think they are. What these parents and teachers are missing is that young people are responding to something toxic and sexist, and that’s a culture of non-consensual sexization.
Why does this culture of embarrassment exist among young women?
There is a dominant idea that if a girl is perceived as being too sexual, whatever it is, she deserves to be judged negatively, laughed at, and treated as a pariah. Even those who should know well are growing up in this environment, whether conscious or unconscious, where it is the dominant way of thinking about girls and women. We all do that regardless of gender. But when girls do it on each other it hurts more and we have a higher standard for them, so we pay more attention to it. It’s about girls and women being embarrassed by each other and distracting themselves. I’m not saying it’s malicious, but it’s a coping mechanism within a culture of slutty embarrassment.
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You write that even if they are alone, it may feel as if a woman is valued. why?
I was called a woman when I was in high school, but when I got home and closed the bedroom door I knew there was real privacy and I could escape the embarrassment of a slut. Right now, that level of privacy really doesn’t exist. There is always a camera around us, and with the sexually explicit deepfakes and the surge in ai nudify apps, we all risk opposing the will and exposing images. Therefore, there is no sense of privacy, and this gaze on us is inevitable, omnipresent and terrifying. I think we all internalized it, but especially those who were growing up and didn’t know about other circumstances. One way that affects us is to feel like we’re always on. Therefore, we must always think about what we look like to others.
Many of the women in your book talked about regaining control after traumatic experiences, such as experiencing sexual assault or image-based sexual abuse. But does this idea feed the stereotype that people who post “sexy selfies” have self-esteem and “daddy problems”?
I’ve been tracking the embarrassment of sluts since the mid-1990s, but in the opposite direction I’ve seen this complete shutdown of sexuality, including being overly sexually active for clumsy reasons, a complete shutdown of sexuality that makes me want to prove my point, or intentionally developing an intentional eating of someone who is not attractive. So I’ve seen both extreme behavioral responses.
I look at it more overall, but “as much as someone says), “I was a victim of revenge porn. Now I have only a fan, and maybe so. But that person who was a victim of revenge porn is also a victim of a lot of other things, and I think that’s what’s missing in the analysis right now.
I also write about the self-denial of women’s bodies on a platform like only fan through a lot of empowerment, but don’t let them move away from the living experiences of women who see their labour as just that. What about women who don’t think this is empowering? How do all women find common positions?
I don’t want to suggest that it empowers everyone. Even for those with it, there are so many risks they are taking. So it is a matter of making informed decisions. When someone is regaining ownership of their sexuality, if they are doing it to prove the point, if they are not bringing out joy in any way, whether physical, emotional or psychological, then it is of no use to them or anyone. So I want to intervene and make sure they are making decisions that will ultimately improve their lives and not make their lives worse. But can our act of self-empowerment make things all together for women as a class of people? That’s a huge risk. One thing I want women to think is not only to promote themselves, but to promote others.
