#2 Recent news - leaked photos, Emma Watson and Sam Pepper

Okay, so there is one thing we can probably all agree on. This blog, is pretty lighthearted, right? I’d say so.



If you’re here for lighthearted, don’t read this post, wait till my next one which I promise will be lighthearted, but for today we’re going to get heavy. Sorry in advance.

I’m a feminist and I’m not afraid to say it (why should I? there will be a post on this topic in the near future) and a lot of things have happened recently which have really, lets say awoken, my angry feminist side (trust me you don’t wanna provoke it.

I think where it first started was all the leaked celebrity nudes, Jennifer Lawrence, Victoria Justice, Kate Upton, and Calum Hood. Is there one there you didn’t hear much about? Calum Hood was it? The bassist from 5 Seconds Of Summer had a nude leaked in the form of a video sent via snapchat, which was then posted on vine.

But why didn’t we get as much coverage about Calum? I guess because he’s a man, well a boy he is only eighteen. But news about all the females (Jennifer Lawrence in particular) was circling everywhere! This strong, independent, beautiful actress with a previously clean background had taken nude photos in private and without her consent or knowledge had them leaked.

We now have a different representation of all these women, this is going to stick with them for years, on chat shows, in red carpet interviews, and they won’t be able to escape it.

We have blatant objectification of women and a way people can directly embarrass and/or shame these women.

We have further questions and new answers and more discussions on ‘what is privacy?’ and should celebrities have it and should they be happy with having their private photos exposed to the world via social media, which causes such major impacts on the world. 

We have people shaming these women for what they did. Acting as if what they did was illegal, when they themselves have probably done the same thing. We have even more of a platform on double standards, the women got shamed and called names like “slut” “whore” “silly cows” whereas as Calum Hood, the eighteen year old bassist of 5 Seconds Of Summer trended on twitter with hastags such #weloveyoucalum and #savecalumhood.

It feels like women can’t escape from derogatory terms about them, even if just by the way they are dressed.

It needs to stop because it is so wrong on so many levels.

Of course the internet went crazy about these nudes, JLaw’s in particular (why? because of her image) and one thing I stumbled across when on youtube was a parody video by a guy called Dave Days, you have heard of him through Rebecca Black’s song ‘Saturday’ (great song btw). His video was a parody of Taylor Swift’s latest single ‘Shake It Off’ (again great song) and the subject of the parody was on JLaw’s leaked photos. One of the main things I majorly disliked about this parody was the victim blaming! 

It is never the victim’s fault whether it be bullying, sexual assault/harassment/rape or having your private photos leaked/released whether you are a celebrity or not. Lyrics such as “everybody’s going cray, but I’m just gonna shake it off” where he seen with a bottle of moisturiser, delightful Dave. Not long after this is the lyric “What did you expect posting pictures on the net? Such an easy target, don't post you'll later regret”, and “so many pictures, it’s gonna be a good night”.

This parody, from a guy I’d previously heard good things about, left me in shock and I’m glad some of the comments agreed.


Something else that has been happening recently is Emma Watson’s incredible speech for the UN about the HeForShe campaign, to find out in detail about the campaign click here.

This got mostly an amazing reception (and so it should) and there are influential male celebrities backing this campaign, which is brilliant to see, I am so happy about it! However, a certain website (4chan), a group of disgusting people were for some reason threatened by Emma’s speech. A quite tame speech about feminism. A speech about enlightening men on feminism and not seeing it as a “dirty word”. But they still felt threatened. Their response? "She makes stupid feminist speeches at UN, and now her nudes will be online"

They even made a countdown titled “Emma You Are Next” how sick can you get?

The fact that nudes of female celebrities are being used as a threat and a way of shaming the women shows how of a misogynistic world we live in.

4chan basically went 100% against what the HeForShe campaign is because they felt threatened by an influential woman. Woman being the main word.

Another example of how much of a misogynistic world we live in comes from youtube star Sam Pepper. He made two videos called “Fake Hand Ass Pinch Prank” the first where he approached woman in the street and touched their butts with a fake hand and in the second showed women doing the same to men, this was sexual harassment and of course people on twitter were disgusted. Sam later released a third video "Part 3 The Reveal" saw Sam calling the previous videos ‘social experiments’ saying that the horrified response was what he wanted to show how bad sexual harassment is. He also claimed the video was scripted and staged. However, the people in the video, the women especially, looked disgusted and horrified at Sam’s actions. These videos have resulted in him being majorly disliked by so many, including other youtubers and he has been banned from three major youtube conventions.

Whether or not his videos were a social experiment you cannot exclude how ridiculous a social experiment it was “I’m going to sexually harass people to show other people that sexual harassment is wrong” I just don’t get it????

As if what Sam had already done wasn’t bad enough, these videos led to some incredibly brave young girls coming forward and telling their experiences when it came to Sam Pepper. Youtuber Dottie Martin uploaded a video about how when she was sixteen, Sam Pepper sexually assaulted her and then blamed her.

Another video came from a girl who wishes to be anonymous about how Sam Pepper raped her. 

Sam has yet to say anything on this however he had the time to tweet about how he wasn’t sending threatening emails to youtubers such as Laci Green.

Sam Pepper needs to be stopped. He needs to be arrested and put on the sex offenders’ list because what he has done is absolutely disgusting and the thought of him makes me sick.

If you want to know more about this topic please do check out my friend Rachael’s video and my friend Tabitha’s blog post.

Thank you for reading, again apologies on how heavy this post has been but I felt I needed to express my views on these issues and this was the perfect platform.

Vicki x

forever dreaming of working for the bbc and crying over fall out boy