Aussie darling Steph Claire Smith has opened up about a pretty fucked experience she had in high school when her nudes were leaked by someone she trusted when she was underage.
In an episode of the KICPOD podcast which she hosts with her business partner Laura Henshaw, Steph got pretty candid and vulnerable about the rough time.
The conversation was sparked by a listener who sent in a story to the pod about when her best friend’s dad found some skimpy pics of her on her friend’s family’s iCloud server. Unlucky, hey?
While the listener explained how her friends’ parents forwarded the images to her own parents, Laura and Steph started discussing what they’d do as parents in that situation. It wasn’t long before Steph revealed that the story triggered her because she had her own experience with nudes being shared around her high school.
“I remember very clearly walking into school and knowing that it had been shared around the night before,” Steph reflected.
“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, their fucking teenagers like they just don’t understand like how that feels.”
She recalled the questions that people asked her after the gossip spread.
“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?”
While Laura chimed in to remind Steph that it had nothing to do with her, but with the person who decided to distribute the photo, Steph said that he was given praise for the awful situation.
“He was fucking championed. He was a legend. It was so bad,” she remembered.
“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.”
They shared a clip of the powerful segment on Instagram. You can watch it below.
As someone who is teetering on the edge of a millennial classification (Zillenial?) I remember this dialogue all too well.
I went to a co-ed public school and I still recall when my entire year was pulled into an assembly so two police officers could tell us how bad taking nudes was. While I know their intentions were to discourage yucky people from distributing the images without the consent of the person taking the pic, the language they used made it feel like the blame was on the shoulders of girls (like me) who had taken nudes.
As highlighted by Steph and Laura, there was so much shame and stigma associated with having your nudes leaked. And while it’s incredibly important to be responsible with your digital footprint, ultimately, it’s important to remember the person taking the spicy pic hasn’t done anything wrong.
In the comments on their IG reel, many other women shared their own stories, praising the duo for speaking so candidly about a topic often shrouded in shame.
“Now knowing that someone I look up to in the health and fitness industry and as a mother, has experienced the same thing I did in high school makes me feel a bit better about what I went through,” one person wrote.
“So many girls in my high school it happened to and the eyes were never on the boy who shared in,” said another.
“This has happened to far too many people, and they’re left feeling shameful and their mental health impacted. I think how you both explained this was powerful and healing,” wrote another.
In the powerful episode, the gals also discussed other issues of gender inequality including the mental load within relationships and the ongoing impact of the gender pay gap. It’s worth a listen if you’ve got the time.
It’s not easy to talk about things like this on a platform as big as theirs.
Kudos to Steph and Laura for making other people who have been in this situation feel less alone.
The post Steph Claire Smith Has Bravely Shared A Fkd Story Of When Her Nudes Were Leaked In High School appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
