Steph Claire Smith On The Slut-Shaming She Received After Sending Nudes
I wish this wasn’t true, but almost every female I know has a ‘nudes story’. And these stories aren’t happy ones of consensual sharing and mutual respect – they are ones of violation, disappointment and more often than not, slut-shaming.
Steph Claire Smith just added her own story to the pile.
On her podcast KICPOD with her co-host and bestie, Laura Henshaw, Steph spoke about an incident where she sent nudes to a guy she was seeing, only to have her trust betrayed as he shared her photos around the school.
“I remember very clearly walking into school and knowing that it had been shared around the night before,” Steph said on the podcast.
“Girls wouldn’t talk to me like other than like, obviously my friends were fine, but girls wouldn’t talk to me. Everyone was just looking at me. Guys would just make comments like, you know, ‘oh, nice photo’, you know, they’re fucking teenagers like they just don’t understand like how that feels.”
The business owner said that the questions that followed her around after her images had been shared almost hurt her more.
“I wasn’t dating this person that I sent photos to. And they were like ‘Why would you? Why would you do that? That’s so dumb. Like how dumb are you?’”
Laura was quick to step in at this point to remind Steph that the fault certainly didn’t lie with her, but with the person who decided to distribute the photo without her consent. However, Steph explained that while she was being judged by her peers, he was given praise.
“He was fucking championed. He was a legend. It was so bad,” she recalled.
“I felt like an idiot and felt deserving of the judgment I got from others, getting called a slut, attention seeker, or the rude remarks from other guys, asking for some ‘just for them’…” Steph later shared on Instagram, nudging followers to reflect on situations they may have witnessed when they were at school.
“How familiar is this story to you?” she said. “It may not have been you who it happened to, but sadly I’m sure you knew of someone. And how did you judge them for it? Why do we blame the woman in this situation, each and every time? The one-sided shaming is not ok.”
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When asked how she feels about the whole saga now, Steph has clarity, saying she refuses to take on shame for what she did.
“The funny thing is, because of how I feel about that sort of stuff now, and I don’t believe there should be any shame around it, I don’t have any regrets or like feel bad about it now. Also if ever any of those pictures were to resurface, I was underage. So like, anyone who has those photos, like you’re pretty fucked up by now. We’re adults and like, I was literally 16.”
While this is a disgustingly common situation, it still takes nerve to speak about it on such a public platform, so I want to say thank you to Steph and Laura for discussing this so all of us who have dealt with our own ‘nudes story’ can feel a little less lonely.
If this has raised any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. 13Yarn is also available for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in need of support.
Image credit: @stephclairesmith Instagram