Chris Evans’ nude picture leak would have happened very differently if he was a woman

On Saturday, 39-year-old Hollywood actor Chris Evans shared a nude photograph of himself to his 5.7 million followers seemingly accidentally, while attempting to upload an Instagram video. 

The photo that “drove Twitter wild” was of an erect penis that everyone assumed to be the actor’s. Although he almost immediately deleted the video, screenshots made their way across Twitter, prompting thousands of jokes, with many people expressing their attraction to Evans. 

Twitter is notorious for its humor, so sometimes the larger point can get lost amid the deftly crafted memes and jokes. But there’s nothing funny about someone’s nude pictures being shared without their consent. It’s sad to see that when it comes to celebrities, even those of us who claim to be fierce advocates for consent can sometimes end up throwing our values out the window. 

Much of this is due to the inherent violence of celebrity culture. We lift these people up on a pedestal, far away from us mortal beings. We consume them, relentlessly. Because of this, so often, celebrities’ need for privacy and respect is of little consequence. The industries that prop up their outsized fame have encouraged us to feel like we’re shareholders in the myth of their celebrity — which includes not only their bodies, but their minds and spirits and innermost feelings. We assume we are entitled to bear witness to it all, regardless of consent.

The levels of removal we have from celebrities — our exposure to them or rare interactions with them happening almost entirely on social media — help us to maintain this detachment.  Technology can be a tool of connection — we’ve never seen this more clearly than during the Covid-19 pandemic — but it can also strip away empathy, making our proclaimed values about consent a lot easier to abandon. 

In the case of Evans’ pictures, gender also plays a huge role here, and one that should not be ignored. Previously, women actors like Jennifer Lawrence whose nude pictures were leaked without their consent were blamed relentlessly and cruelly. “I was just so afraid,” Lawrence told Vanity Fair in 2014. “I didn't know how this would affect my career.”

In contrast, Evans seemed to be mostly spared from cruel or threatening messages. Having your personal pictures shared without your consent is traumatizing in any context, but it is harder to heal from these incidents when you’re being called sexist slurs, when you’re getting a barrage of rape threats, and when you fear that you will lose professional opportunities. 

Evans has been open about his serious struggles with depression and anxiety, and those struggles surely must have resurfaced in the wake of this incident. However, it’s undeniable that he was treated differently than women and people of other marginalized genders are when their nude photos are leaked. 

As always, misogyny also harms men. So the misogynistic views that lead people to take Evans’ pictures and lack of consent less seriously is also what can lead men to feel more isolated when these violations of consent occur. There’s a pressure to regard it as “just a joke" — a compliment, even — and move on. There’s a sense that a man would not mind his body being shared and dissected across the internet, so it becomes less of a serious offense to share and ogle at those pictures; less of a violation.

During times like these, it’s important for people to understand that we do not own any human being. We are not owed access to their bodies, and we do not have the right to taunt them and share their private pictures. We’re conditioned to believe that celebrities belong to us in many ways, but they do not. The more we disregard consent — even when it just seems like a joke, even if the person feels pressure to “play along” — the more we make this world a more dangerous place for everyone, especially the most marginalized. 

Because of his gender, race, and status, Evans will likely not face any professional consequences or public castigation for this apparent social media slip-up. However, he is still a human being whose consent was violated when people continued to share a sexual photograph that he clearly wanted to remain private. Those things hurt and they leave scars, regardless of who you are.