You may remember a story from a couple of months ago about Playboy Playmate Dani Mathers taking an invasive body-shaming photo of a woman changing in the women’s locker room of a Los Angeles gym. She could now face jail time.
Back in July, Mathers became the scourge (well, one of many scourges) of the Internet when a Snapchat that she thought she’d sent privately (or so her lawyers now say) was posted, then captured to live on in Internet Infamy.
Playboy model Dani Mathers faces serious jail time after shaming nude woman on #Snapchat https://t.co/LIMmEOSMOU pic.twitter.com/YyXYOLx0Lc
— UPROXX (@UPROXX) September 6, 2016
She sneakily took a photo of an older woman changing in the women’s locker room of an L.A. Fitness and posted it with the caption, “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.” She posted that alongside a selfie where she looked downright scandalized by this woman’s physique.
Now, according to Uproxx, she may be facing jail time for her invasive and insensitive action.
The LAPD has tracked down the 70-year-old woman in the photo. As there can be no case without someone pressing charges, they have alerted her to what happened, and that Mathers could be charged with “dissemination of private images.” As reported by Uproxx, she is “more than willing to testify and cooperate in any way she can to bring Mathers to justice.”
If charged and convicted with dissemination of private images, she could face six months in jail, whether she intended to post the photo publicly or not.
That’s because taking photos in gym locker rooms is illegal. So much so that even having a cell phone out in a locker room is often against gym policy and could lead to getting banned from the gym at the very least. As it stands now, Mathers has not only been banned from L.A. Fitness gyms, but she has also been indefinitely suspended from her radio show hosting gig.
If a man had sneaked in to take a photo and put it on the Internet for others to see, there’d be no question of how wrong Mathers’ actions were. Now, her lawyer Tom Mesereau is telling the New York Daily News that Mathers “never tried to hurt anyone at any time, and certainly never tried to break any law.” Because apparently, posting non-consensual naked photos of anyone anywhere on the Internet isn’t at all hurtful. Because you only get charged and convicted of crimes when you were trying to break the law.
I’m sorry for what I did… I need to take some time to myself now to reflect on why I did this horrible thing. Goodnight.
— Dani Mathers (@DaniMathers) July 14, 2016
This isn’t just an issue of a jerk body shaming a naked woman for the world to see (although it is that. Make no mistake. Mathers presented herself as a judgmental, hateful jerk).
It’s an issue of privacy in a place where you’re expected to have it.
We’re at our most vulnerable in public locker rooms. No one should have to worry about the people who are allowed to be in there making them unsafe.
