One picture can’t be so bad.

Sometimes, one picture isn’t even needed.

“I just want to know who it is, I’m kind of nosy,” said sophomore Joseph Rodriguez, an avid follower of “exposing” accounts, more specifically the social media accounts where he can see someone he knows nude.

Wanting to know if the nude person depicted is genuinely someone he goes to school with pushes him to the point of directly asking, privately. It is not uncommon for a photo to be edited to look like a nude photo of someone people know.

Putting these revealing photos online has greater impact than many realize or would like to realize. Girls especially are criticized for being sexually exposed or having their nude photos leaked.
If the person being exposed is uncomfortable being seen in that light this can alter their lives extremely. Refusal to speak about the subject of their exposure because the betrayal was too great, or because the social alienation is more intimidating than the actual sharing of one’s nude pictures is quite common.

The majority of people who had their naked body shown to their peers without their permission would not want to be reminded of what happened.

No one really wants to talk about their friend or someone they know being put on a website for having their nude photos leaked. Then again no one really wants to have their sexually provocative photos leaked in the first place, but more than one person out there wants to see them.

Even if someone did not originally want to see pictures of someone they know, having it online with such easy access can be tempting.

“I don’t follow the accounts but people show me.” Sophomore Bertha Raygoza has seen more than her share of nude pictures, despite her not directly looking for them. Refusing to acknowledge something when it’s right in front of you is much harder than it looks, and Raygoza finds she can be sucked in rather easily.

For exposing Instagram pages, the most common, they are normally kept on private and require someone to shout the page out to be accepted as a follower.

Rodriguez does not go through with this, for fear of family members seeing what he is doing and being disapproving or judging. He simply requests to follow the pages and they accept him. He says he hardly sticks out when dealing with all the other follower requests.

The nude pictures posted can be kept by anyone who has access to them. It only takes a second to take a screenshot. Rodriguez admits to taking a few screenshots, wanting to keep the photos after the page is inevitably deleted for inappropriate content. He has seen around six people he knows on Instagram pages alone.
The people who are responsible for one of these posts can be a vengeful ex or simply someone spreading a rumor because they don’t like the person in question. What’s classified as “exposure” ranges from a simple rumor to a full on nude visual. While this mass platform is commonly used, showing explicit pictures personally is not uncommon. Even without the page, Rodriguez would have access to these pictures by his friends showing them to him.

Rodriguez has seen explicit images of girls his friends have received pictures from, committed sexual acts with, sometimes even videos of that actual act. “Guys want to show off what they got.”

He finds it is more commonly guys who are willing to share that sort of thing, girls a much more rare occurrence. “I don’t know what it is, girls just don’t seem to want to expose people as much.”

His willingness to keep such photos is partially due to him finding it more the fault of the person who initially sent the photo.

“As soon as you send nudes, you should know you’ll be exposed or shown to that person’s friends,” he said.

Sophomore Brenda Paleyo’s view is nearly the exact opposite. She feels sending a revealing picture requires extreme trust and that trust should not be violated.

“It just seems mean. Why would you want to hurt someone like that?” Paleyo has never felt comfortable or trusting enough to send such pictures and does not plan on it for fear of being betrayed so extremely. Paleyo finds the pages in question moronic as the only point of them is to make someone feel bad or hurt them.

“Think about how what you’re doing is going to affect someone. Think about how it’s going to hurt them.”