Playboy Playmate Dani Mathers found herself in the headlines last week, but for once it wasn’t about her body; it was about someone else’s.
The model shared a photo of a woman undressing in her LA gym’s changeroom on Snapchat, captioning the image, “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.”
Whether it was her intention or not — she’s claimed it was supposed to be a private message to a friend, not part of her public ‘story’ — Mathers’ nasty post reached thousands of people and was met with a swift and strong backlash.
Mathers' Snapchat story, censored. Image: Twitter
While the 29-year-old has since been banned from the gym, reported to local police and lost professional roles — and rightly so — the cruelty of her attempt to body shame a stranger in such a public way has stuck with women around the world.
Now, they're challenging Mathers to "unsee" their bodies.
The movement was sparked when Florida mum Christine Blackmon posted a defiant open letter to Mathers on Facebook, accompanied by a photo of herself posing playfully in just underwear, a headband and sneakers.
In the post, shared to the Delicate Flowers page on Sunday, Blackmon explained the photo had been snapped by her husband while she was changing out of her scrubs.
"Later, I saw the picture and begged him to delete it. I hated it, all I saw was lumps and bumps. He simply smiled and softly said, 'I think it's beautiful'. So I let him keep it," she wrote.
How many of us have a photo like that?
Blackmon then addressed Mathers directly, introducing her to her body in all its "lumpy, bumpy glory".
"Here's the deal. You may have been a Playboy model but not all of us workout to be 'hot'. Some of us work out simply to honour the bodies we were given. That's all that woman was trying to do and you violated her," she said, referencing the stranger in the model's Snapchat image.
Watch: The trailer for new body positivity film Embrace. (Post continues after video.)
"Shame on you. I bet I could get 100s of women to post their beautiful bodies and regardless of size, shape or colour, they will ALL be more beautiful than the ugliness you showed in that post. #UnSeeTHIS."
Blackmon admits to Cosmopolitan she didn't expect her post to go viral, but it's amassed more than 40,000 likes, 5000 shares and 2000 comments.
What's even more wonderful is that it's prompted other women to put their own supposedly 'imperfect' bodies out there for the world to see.
There's this post from Candy, wearing a colostomy bag on holiday in Hawaii:
Top Comments
I'm glad this has occurred. I admit that I was struck by how many people assumed that the naked lady at the centre of the controversy would be embarrassed by the photo. The assumption is that she should be because she is not young and thin and unblemished. Even many, f not all, of the body positive advocates made this assumption.
I'm not comfortable with nudity (my hangup) and so I objected to the photo being released. However, I thought the first naked lady's body looked "lived in". She had done things and enjoyed things in that body. It was not pristine like a new, unread book. It was more like a favourite book that had been enjoyed often, without any consideration for its resale value.
the assumption was not that the person was embarrassed by their body, just that they would be (rightly) offended that someone would take a photo of them whilst in a change-room, disregarding any expectation of privacy
How many people realistically would like a naked photo of us changing at the gym posted to someone's snapchat, instagram or facebook without our permission or consent to mock us to their friends?