Tracking The Jess Origliasso “Porn Storm”
Posted by Clem Bastow on August 1, 2008
News spread around the web like brushfire yesterday when PhotoBooth shots of “Jess Origliasso” from The Veronicas (I use inverted commas because no one – including her spokesperson from Warner Records – is certain whether the baps-out shot is actually her) turned up on Fleshbot (NSFW, der). Naturally, the reaction on the home front has been predictably, well, predictable. Here’s a selection of News Ltd headlines:
Jess Origliasso embroiled in porn site picture scandal
The Veronicas’ Jess Origliasso caught in porn storm
The Veronicas’ wild child in porn site storm
And so on. You get the sense the News stable is gearing up for some serious slut-shaming in their continued coverage; cop this excerpt:
Cementing her status as the wilder of the two siblings, Jess – identified by her distinctive tattoo on her bare upper back – is pictured with a suggestive expression in the sepia-toned image.
“Cementing her status as the slutty one” is what they really mean. (And I love the use of “suggestive”.)
What bothers me about these sorts of stories – and there are a lot of them these days, from the Vanessa Hudgens pics to the Kristin Davis shots – is that, inevitably, they are about “exposing” women as unstoppable sex machines (and, occasionally, revealing a male star’s gay secrets; nude scandals rarely seem to target straight male celebs, unless it’s in a high-fiving, “Go you stud!” manner).
There’s the implication that these women are somehow dirty or slutty (or porny) for having taken photos with/for someone they were (presumably) in a relationship with, which to me always seems like a perfectly normal bit of sex play (and let’s face it, taking dirty photos is pretty much vanilla these days).
And has it really come to the point where taking some reasonably tasteful sexy photos of oneself is “porn”? The shots might have ended up on Fleshbot, but they weren’t made for it.
The wailing in the streets seems at odds with the whole Cleo/Cosmo culture that tells us we should all be having incredible sex lives, but when a celebrity is revealed to actually be, you know, having an amazing sex life, the media gets in its time machine and presses in “1950s” on the destination keypad.
tina_sparkle said
since when did the definition of ’suggestive’ come to mean ‘wants to strip like carmen electra and sit on your face?’
jess could be ’suggesting’ anything. like ‘how about thai for dinner?’ or ‘why don’t you get me a cup of tea?’
audrey said
I think far more disturbing than the nakedness in these photos (particularly the leaked Miley Cyrus ones) is the vacant expression so reminiscent of generic porn shots. It depresses me that young women equate sexiness with removing all trace of themselves from a photo and merely pouting with glazed eyes.
Also, there’s a celebrity nipple watch? Weird.
audrey said
Oh, and just to clarify – I don’t actually find the nakedness weird. It’s shit that we live in a world that constantly tells us to have more and more sex, be sexier, be available, be aware, be empowered, be in control – yet the minute young women do that in a private setting of their own volition it’s suddenly shocking and can make or break careers.
Yet getting Cyrus to dress up in short tight tweeniey clothes and strut around in through a Disneyfied porn lens? That’s wholesome.