Porn in a flash

A troubling surge in creepy "upskirt" photography has lawmakers in a twist -- and the body parts of women posted all over the Internet.

By Tracy Clark-Flory

Read more: Pornography, Privacy, Japan, Sex, Photography, Intellectual Property, Cell Phones, Life, Tracy Clark-Flory

Christopher Walsh/Salon

Nov. 25, 2008 | On a warm summer day two years ago, a 16-year-old girl put on a skirt and headed to the SuperTarget in her hometown of Tulsa, Okla. As she shopped the air-conditioned aisles, a man knelt behind her, carefully slid a camera in between her bare legs and snapped a photo of her underwear. Police arrested the 34-year-old man, but the charges were ultimately dropped on the grounds that the girl did not, as required by the state's Peeping Tom law, have "a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy," given the public location. In non-legalese: Wear a skirt in public, and you might just get a camera in the crotch.

Locals were outraged. Most women slipping on a summer dress aren't hoping to star in an amateur -- or, worse yet, professional -- porno, just as most men don't expect strangers to take a snapshot of their package when they wear shorts in public. In response to the ruling, Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa, introduced a bill making it illegal in Oklahoma to take unauthorized photos of someone's private areas in public; it went into effect earlier this month. For the same reason, nearly half the states have had to enact similar laws.

When it comes to voyeurs who photograph or videotape up a woman's skirt (known as "upskirting") or snap a photo down a woman's shirt ("downblousing"), though, "there are not many practical, legal remedies available to people who find themselves the victim," says Anita Allen, a privacy expert and professor at Penn Law. That's if the woman even realizes she is a victim in the first place, which is unlikely, as the voyeur typically manages to go undetected. If the photo or video is published online -- which, increasingly, it is -- it would be difficult for the subject to ever come across the material. Even if she did, how could she recognize one underwear-clad rear as her own?

Privacy experts say the failure of the law to catch up with technology has allowed for a kind of Wild West online, a frontier of rogue pornographers from all over the world. It's such a craze in Japan that cellphone cameras now come with a shutter sound that alerts bystanders that a photo is being taken; in that country, even the iPhone 3G features an extra-loud anti-upskirt alarm.

A quick search of PhoneBin, an online gallery of photos submitted directly from cellphones, is enough to cause any woman to briefly contemplate hauling off her sundresses to the nearest Salvation Army. Photo after photo -- shot right between a pair of legs or at a distant, low angle -- shows women wearing skirts in public. It's easy enough to imagine how the photographer pulls it off: kneeling to the ground, pretending to tie his shoe, standing a few steps below on the escalator pretending to send a text message. Others are clearly failed attempts. For example, a user comments on a grainy photo of a woman's skirted rear: "Nice arse but you need to get closer to the ground and more upskirt if you want to be taken seriously." Yes, even pervs have strict aesthetic standards.

A keyword search for "upskirt" on the photo-sharing site Flickr turns up 36,368 hits. One user has taken 48 candid shots of women's stockinged rears walking up stairs in the Paris Metro subway station. The vast majority of these photos, however, are not upskirts at all, but close-ups of women's body parts taken in public places like the subway, parks and street corners. Some Flickr members specialize in these types of shots, many with a particular area of expertise: breasts, bums, nipple slips, whale tails (the top of a thong peeking over the waist of a woman's pants), camel toes, legs or feet. Amazingly, one user has amassed 1,455 photos of disembodied, hastily framed shots taken with a cellphone camera of various body parts -- feet, breasts, butt and legs -- that could belong to any woman, really. Similar shots can be found on many other popular photo-sharing sites, like Fotki and Photobucket.

Some gather in groups dedicated to all manner of candid photography to salivate over photos and engage in back-and-forths about their craft. In a discussion thread in the group "The Upskirt Arena," members wax poetic about their artistic preferences. The discussion becomes repetitive very quickly. One user writes: "Personally I love the unsuspecting one's [sic], but being a fan of upskirts I enjoy all of them." Another responds: "Yeah the unsuspecting ones are my favourites as well!!!" And another: "Its [sic] all so very sexy getting a flash of that forbidden public zone." Yet another: "I like either unsuspecting ones or accidental ones, not posed ones." And so on, and so on.

Susan Gallagher, a professor of political science at University of Massachusetts Lowell who teaches classes on gender, privacy and politics, points out, "One of the tricks in pornography is that the target is unaware, because then you have power." She says upskirting presents a lesser sexual challenge than, for instance, the "Girls Gone Wild" franchise, that indefatigable chronicler of the spring break rite of boobs and booze. The essential difference here is that candid photographers -- rather than the female subjects, in the case of breast-flashing coeds -- are able to be the sexual aggressor but without actually having to confront a woman.

These candid connoisseurs also swap technical tips (for instance, how to inconspicuously shoot from the hip), legal pointers and advice on how to avoid getting in trouble with the law or having their account deleted for violating Flickr's terms of service, which includes the directive, "Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don't be that guy." Director of community Heather Champ says that Flickr generally has a "high-water mark" for what constitutes a violation but adds, "I personally think that upskirting and downblousing are kind of forcibly invading someone's privacy in a way that is very disrespectful."

The question of where to draw a line between artistic street photography and fetishistic candids that reduce a woman to her toe cleavage is like that ever-unreliable definition of pornography: I know it when I see it. John Morris, general counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, puts the reality simply: "If you don't want to be photographed walking the street, don't walk down the street -- it's a public street."

There's a vast difference, though, between slipping a camera between a woman's legs and taking a poignant photo of the homeless man sleeping in a doorway; the vast majority of candid shots on mainstream photo sites fall within the latter category. But, then, there are candid shots that don't actually cross a woman's hemline or neckline. A friend of mine had a man obviously take a photo of her ass while she wandered around an art museum in London; a colleague living in New York City has twice had guys whip out a cellphone and blatantly snap a photo of her rack (if it happens again, she swears she's "going to go Kanye West on his ass"). Plenty more common is for women to have a cellphone camera pointed toward them, perhaps at an odd angle, in public and wonder: Wait a sec, are they writing a text message -- or taking a photo of me?

That we are using technology in this way is hardly anything new. "Almost immediately upon the invention of amateur photography there was the detective camera," said professor Gallagher. It could be concealed in your hat or tie, and "the idea of being able to record things without anyone knowing was a craze," she says. The development of technology, and its accessibility, however, is changing our culture: Not only are spy cams available on the cheap, but cameras are now a standard feature on cellphones. The federal Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004 was enacted specifically in response to these high-tech developments, and outlaws virtual peeping that takes place "under circumstances in which the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy."

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