More and more of us taking nude selfies
Rob Kim/Getty Images Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead was hacked, and then lashed out at those who trafficked in the risque images. 
Twitter Mary Elizabeth Winstead tweets about the nude images of herself that were positioned online after her iCloud account was hacked. 
Kim Kardashian posts yet another selfie on Instagram… in this one she’s sunning herself.
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It’s time to face the naked truth.
Everybody’s doing it — taking nude selfies, that is.
The latest celebrity buzz hacking scandal hit this week, revealing alleged compromising photos of actresses like Vanessa Hudgens, Hayden Panettiere and Gabrielle Union, just three weeks after stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton had their private snaps snatched and leaked across the Web.
There’s been some blame directed at the victims. When hacked actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead tweeted, “To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel splendid about yourselves,” comments included, “Stop posing nude on camera, dummy.”
Even fellow celebs pointed fingers, like Ricky Gervais, who tweeted, “Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on your computer.”
But lots of regular men and women also take provocative self portraits every day — and they’re not ashamed to admit it.
“I send them all the time. I’m not gonna lie,” says Michele Khasidy, 25, from Queens, who texts nudies to her boyfriend.
She also loved snapping the sexy selfies when she was release. “You just want to see how you look,” she says.
View Gallery Best selfies of all timeKhasidy isn’t alone. A whopping 88% of women recently surveyed by Cosmo say they’ve taken nude selfies.
Sexts put a flash in freelancer Aaron J.’s relationship. “Me and my girlfriend send them every once in a while,” says the 25-year-ancient from Crown Heights. “When I get them, I’m stoked.”
Dan Falcone, 32, a graphic designer from Bushwick, shares his frisky shots on Snapchat, which theoretically deletes your messages after a few seconds. “I snap them all the time. What’s there to hide?” he says. “Culture says we shouldn’t do it, but who cares?”
Prudes preaching total abstinence from sexts are out of touch with reality. The McAfee security company’s 2014 Like, Relationships & Technology survey found that 54% of their respondents regularly send or hear intimate photos, videos, texts and emails, and that number spikes to 70% when it comes to those aged 18 to 24.
The desire to capture the bare bod and share it with others is nothing new.
“Every new medium that comes along, from cave paintings onward, no sooner does the medium get invented then people start using it for nudes,” says Robert Thompson, a pop-culture historian at Syracuse University. “We’ve found very candid nude paintings on the walls of Pompeii.”
And it’s only natural that those taking and posting self portraits or food porn shots will eventually graduate to sexier snaps.
If you’re taking selfies on a regular basis, that is going to get dull. So it becomes more risque, and that eventually leads to nude photos.
“If you’re taking selfies on a regular basis, that is going to get dull,” says John Suler, a member of the editorial board for the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking. “So it becomes more risque, and that eventually leads to nude photos.”
Plus, making the perfect pin-up shot is a huge ego boost. “You have the opportunity to make an idealized, sexy version of yourself,” Suler adds. “You can exchange the camera angle, exchange the lighting and use filters, and suddenly it’s, ‘Wow, look at me. I’m like a Playboy centerfold.’”
Local ladies agree. “I take nudes. It’s to feel good about yourself. I look f—ing excellent,” says photographer Cathy Rong, 18, from the East Village.
Rachel, an 18-year-ancient student from Queens, only focuses on her favorite assets. “I’m like, look at my ass. It’s cute,” she says. “But you never put your face in that.”
Stef, 29, from Brooklyn, found that taking one candid pic made her comfortable with sending more to her boyfriend. “You cross a threshold and then it’s like, why not?” she says. “It’s fun, it’s titillating, it’s a little bit perilous.”
But it can boomerang. While most hackers aren’t targeting your nudes when Scarlett Johansson’s are just as easily available, everyday exhibitionists have been embarrassed by the accidental slip of a nip pic.
Martina Evans, 21, from the East Village lost control of her intimate collection when she lost her cell. “I had nude photos on my buzz, and my buzz got stolen,” Evans says. “The first thing I plotting was, ‘Oh s—, my photos.’ I don’t know if anyone did anything with them. I don’t even want to think about it.”
Eric Charbonneau/Invision/AP Jennifer Lawrence is a A-lister whose photos have popped up online. When Maya Perry, 23, also from the East Village was in middle school, she and a friend posted a few shots of themselves trying on lingerie to Facebook. “One of the guys at school was looking through Facebook, and his mom was behind him when he came across the photos. She reported it to the school,” says Perry, who adds she got “in honest distress” and is “scarred for life.”
And psychologist and relationship expert Cooper Lawrence recalls having lunch with a guy recently when he suddenly received several graphic sexts showing a mutual friend’s lady bits. “She’d meant to send them to her boyfriend,” says Lawrence. “She was mortified. Completely humiliated.”
If your naked selfies do get out by accident, the best thing to do is fess up and let it go, Lawrence advises. “It was an accident. Your sex life is no one else’s business. So just apologize and go on.”
While abstaining from taking nudies when all’s said and done is the only way to guarantee they won’t leak, it’s not a realistic approach for many. It’s more practical to password protect your buzz and photo storage, doublecheck the recipient before hitting “send,” and to only sext someone you trust completely.
“We have decided that the things we like to do online are things we like so much that we’re willing to take the risk,” says Thompson. “I know my credit card is not really secure anywhere online… but I am willing to take that chance because I want to be able to order things online.”
And we want to be able to keep our pix in iCloud storage. “People don’t do photo albums anymore. This is how you store pictures,” says Thompson. “Most people know this stuff can get hacked, but they don’t want to completely stop doing it. And they won’t.”
With Zoe Lake and Brea C. Mosley
