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  • 2 days ago
"Inside the Big Brother house, I understood that I was being watched," Taylor Hale, our Playmate of the Month, writes. "But… there's a difference between agreeing to be observed and being consumed."

After winning the contest (and it's $750,000 prize), Hale discovered there were images of her naked body all over the internet—clipped from the Big Brother live feed by viewers.

Here, Hale explains why she shot with Playboy to take her naked body back: ply.by/4olwm6

Video: George Wasgatt and Kerriann Farrell
Editor-in-Chief: Phillip Picardi
Creative, Playboy: Smiley Stevens
Director of Photography: Ty Rogers
Gaffer: Bobby Wotherspoon
Sound: Kyle Pham

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CRSJ2JExZ/

Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:00There are corners of the internet where fragments of my naked body exist.
00:05They were clipped from the live feeds by viewers who were not interested in the story I was living,
00:10but in the access the surveillance provided them.
00:13They shared images of my body in its most vulnerable moments,
00:16like changing my clothing or sleeping in the middle of the night.
00:25Hi, I'm Ms. March, Taylor Hale, and this is why I shop for Playboy.
00:30I said yes to living inside a house where cameras watched me 24 hours a day.
00:36Microphones dangled above my head as I slept while being observed.
00:39It was explicit and contractual.
00:42But even there, the psychological boundaries of consent were more fraught than they appeared.
00:47There is a difference between agreeing to be observed and being consumed.
00:52Technically, I consented to being filmed.
00:54Technically, I agreed to the possibility that anything could be seen.
00:58And when I left that house, I said yes again to a career that depends on being seen.
01:04My life is content now.
01:07Once you become visible enough, the public begins to feel like a participant in your existence.
01:11We've seen this in the paparazzi scandals of the 90s and early aughts,
01:15all the way to the creeps wearing meta-glasses to glance down girls' blouses
01:19and post their findings on the internet.
01:22Reality TV was, in many ways, an early prototype for the world we exist in now.
01:27Surveillance no longer feels oppressive.
01:29It feels ordinary, whether you're a television personality like me
01:33or any girl posting videos from her bedroom on TikTok.
01:36The more access people have to your image,
01:38the more this access is mistaken for ownership.
01:40Choosing to be photographed in this way is a direct engagement with this new reality.
01:46I am an active participant in the making of the images for this magazine.
01:50I assumed my power by becoming a co-creator.
01:53I want these images to be something that allows me ownership over my body.
01:58This moment feels so special.
02:00It's an opportunity for reclamation,
02:02for active consent in my most vulnerable form.
02:06But consent, real consent, still belongs to the person being seen.
02:11This is something none of us should take for granted.
02:14And it's something I remain committed to fighting for,
02:17even if it took me posing in my underwear for you to think twice about it.
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