A woman’s body belongs to her and no one should try and take that away. 

Actress Bella Thorne posted her own nude pictures on her Twitter account in response to a hacker trying to blackmail her with the pictures. Thorne took matters into her own hands and didn’t allow the hacker to release the photos on his terms. 

If a woman takes photos of her own body and saves them on her private phone or computer, she shouldn’t have to be afraid of other people exposing her. It is not uncommon for celebrities to be targeted by hackers — Jennifer Lawrence, Miley Cyrus, Kirsten Dunst and many more have all been victims of hackers posting their nude photos online. 

This doesn’t only happen to celebrities. It is common in high schools for a boy to send out a girl’s nudes to all of his friends That is legally considered child pornography, but it’s also a violation of that girl’s privacy. 

You have to be an awful person to use someone’s own body as a threat. If someone shares a photo with you privately you shouldn’t send them out to other people. If someone has photos saved on their phone, it doesn’t belong to anyone else but that person. 

Thorne shouldn’t have to feel ashamed of her body — the hacker should feel ashamed for violating Thorne’s  privacy. When the hacker threatened Thorne, he took away her right to choose whether the photos go public. When Thorne posted the photos herself, it was her choice to publicize them. 

“If you’re famous, I don’t care how old you are, you don’t take nude pictures of yourself,” Co-host of “The View” Whoopi Goldberg said in a controversial discussion about Thorne’s photos. “When they’re hacking you they’re hacking all of your stuff. Once you take that picture, it goes into the cloud and it’s available to any hacker in the world. If you don’t know that in 2019, that this is an issue. I’m sorry, you don’t get to [take nude pictures].” 

What Goldberg said was insensitive and didn’t take Thorne’s feelings into account. She implied that Thorne shouldn’t take nude photos, rather than saying the hacker shouldn’t have blackmailed her. 

We live in a disgusting world where nothing is private because of technology. Everything on your phone or computer could become public because of hackers. Celebrities should not have to be conscious about what is on their phone because they are at risk of being hacked all the time. 

Celebrities are real people too and deserve privacy and the right to choose what the public sees just like anyone else. Thorne responded to Goldberg on her Instagram story. 

“Shame on you, Whoopi,” Thorne said. “Shame on you for putting that public opinion out there like that for every young girl to think that they’re disgusting for even taking a photo like that.”

More often than not, women are the ones blamed for these types of situations. If you get cat-called, it’s the woman’s fault for what she’s wearing. If a woman is taken advantage of, the first question asked is whether the woman was drunk. The fault falls on the victim for being attacked too often. 

In Thorne’s situation, Goldberg shouldn’t have been telling her to take preventative measures — she should’ve been disgusted at the hacker for threatening her with her nude pictures. It’s not Thorne’s fault for taking nude pictures. She’s an adult and can decide what she wants to do with her body, and no one should try and take that away from her. 

Ashlon Lusk is a 20-year-old mass communication sophomore from Houston, Texas.