Got a tip from reader Betsy that goes like this:
I ran across this tumblr that’s pictures of hot guys reading books — much in the vein one of my favorites, cute boys with cats. At first I was psyched because I do enjoy attractive men who also enjoy reading, but I got a bit unnerved reading the captions…It has a lot of voyeuristic looking shots, and many of the captions admit that these photos were taken without the man’s knowledge (or clearly, consent). After your post on the man tumbling hot girls of OWS, I thought you might be interested to see a similar situation, this time with men as the ogle-ees.
lkj
This dude is a model, not a civilian
Betsy raises several very excellent points. One, women are by no means the only recipients of unwanted ogling. Second, it’s the lack of consent that poses the biggest problem, not the ogling itself. It’s the difference between a photo of Ryan Gosling on a red carpet smiling for the camera, and a photo of Ryan Gosling grocery shopping with his mom and trying to be a regular dude. For another, slightly more sinister example… consider the difference between Scarlett Johansson in lingerie for GQ vs. Scarlett Johansson in a naughty photo someone hacked from her phone.
As Betsy so eloquently put it, the voyeurstic non-consensual shots make me feel a “little squicked out.” Squicked… such a great word, but I digress! There have been hot guys on trains (even hot guys reading!) that I would have loved to immortalize on this blog, but just the thought of someone doing the same to me makes me real uncomfortable, and so I restrain myself.
lj
Ownership of one’s image gets real tricky when you’re a celebrity (I’m not saying it should be tricky, it seems pretty cut and dried to me that I don’t have the right to see photos of Sarah Jessica Parker’s kindergartner on his way to school. Historically, though, we give paparazzi all kinds of rights). But for us normal folk, it seems like it should be safe to ride the CTA to work in the morning without someone snapping a pic and posting it to the blogosphere without your knowledge. Now if you ask me first, I just might smile at you :-)
l;kj
Related Post: “Don’t take my picture!” “But you’re at the beach!”
ljk
Related Post: Books for dudes, by chicks.
