Please Stop Taking Off Your Clothes in Public for Instagram Likes

Sacred mountain or highway rest stop: Just don't.

May 4, 2017 9:00 am

We get it. We all have bodies. They are beautiful. Everybody should get naked, as often as possible. Go into the woods! Be naked there! Be naked in a body of water, a practice so singular it has its own verb and noun! Be naked everywhere!

Honestly. Go for it. We’ll wait till you’re dressed. Everyone should be as naked as they wanna be, as long as it’s legal and not in anybody’s literal or metaphorical face (unless they like it that way.)  

Except in the overlap of a Venn diagram with these two labels: 

1: On our Instagram feed. 

2: On sacred mountaintops. 

A post shared by Jaylene Cook (@jaylenecook_) on

Re: Instagram, we’re not talking about the debate over topless women versus topless men, the sexuality versus utility of the female breast, and so on. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, we like to say.

Re: sacred mountaintops. Some natural spaces are held as sacred by the people who’ve lived there for a very, very long time. If your life is somehow enhanced by taking off your kit at the top of their mountains — we do not get that. If that’s the only way you feel free, we suggest reexamining your notion of freedom. But if you gotta do it, do it and get it over with. 

The real problem is the intersection of these two situations: 

When you A) Strip in a place where the people who care about that place would really very much prefer you not; and then B) Share the pic because Instagram success is the best path to fame ‘n’ fortune you’ve so far come up with. 

That’s the place where you’re exploiting your sexuality (hey — your choice) by using it as a lever against someone else’s belief system (also your choice, but a shitty one). See: that lady model pictured above, and her lady boobs, on a mountain in New Zealand that means a lot to some people. The Maori never stripped down in St. Peter’s Basilica, after all.

“Stripping in a sacred place to get Instagram likes” is not a good look for 2017. It’s sub-Kardashian sex tape. It’s sub-Paris Hilton sex tape, and look how that worked out: it’s the express route to desperate irrelevance. 

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