What’s really wrong with Kim Kardashian’s nude selfie

I told myself I was not going to weigh in on the controversy surrounding Kim Kardashian’s nude selfie. Commenting on it only adds life and longevity to something I’d prefer to never be discussing in the first place. Also, I don’t kid myself that anyone beyond my friends and family, and maybe my students, care what I think. But, as another woman in the public eye — actress Chloe Moretz — gets accused of “slut shaming” for being critical of Kardashian, I find I cannot not write about it.

When critics of this photo are accused of slut shaming, the insinuation is that we are uncomfortable with the naked female body and the power of female sexuality. This is wrong. My objection to Kim Kardashian’s nude selfie is not founded in wanting to hide or conceal women’s sexual nature. My problem with this picture is the reduction of female sexuality to an object for the public gaze. Posting a naked picture of yourself doesn’t celebrate a woman’s sexuality, it objectifies it. And to share it with the internet cheapens it, turning a woman into an object that really isn’t worth very much. Something that hurts every woman.

Celebrating your sexual nature means honoring it. My body isn’t to be shared lightly. It isn’t for the internet and the public to gawk at with the click of a few keys.

What’s lost in all this, is the fact that Kardashian is not even celebrating the naked female body, rather a filtered, dyed and hairless phantom of the feminine form. Want to honor the female body? Visit a beach in the summer, and you’ll see women like me and my girlfriends. No hazy Instagram filters there. In swimsuits, our bodies will be on display. In a bikini, you can see the size of my breasts and the shape of my ass. But, you can also see the dimples at the tops of my thighs and the stubborn curve in my stomach. At the beach, the sun beats down on our freckles, it shines a spotlight on our flaws. Our tan lines from running, our scars from surgeries, our stretch marks from child birth, our laugh lines, our birthmarks, they can’t be filtered out. The sun glints off a stray hair by my knee where I missed a spot shaving. It burns down on an impulsive tattoo. The sun reveals us as women. And I think we’re beautiful.

Finally, as a woman, I work really hard to be a whole person. Something that can be challenging in this world. My physical body is just one part of me. I have a brain, a sense of humor (if I do say so myself), I dream, and I feel, and I love.

If you (woman or man) want to do something brave on the internet, try refusing to reduce yourself to your naked sex organs. I’d much rather see a picture of a climber’s calloused hands, a surgery survivor’s scars, a contact-wearer in his glasses, or the image of a brain so wrinkled with knowledge, and ideas, and thoughts, that no one can tell where the lines begin and end.