Unwilling Flasher Sues 'Girls Gone Wild' ... And Loses

on August 5, 2010 at 9:03 AM

Jenny EriksonRecently a jury denied a young woman's claim that Girls Gone Wild had damaged her reputation by filming her dancing at a bar and having her top pulled down. The woman had been suing the company for $5 million in damages, including the estimated $1.5 million made off the video Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy.

Classy.

The jury foreman, Patrick O'Brien, said, "Through her actions, she gave implied consent ... She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing."

The young woman, now a married mother of two daughters, claimed that she had been having fun until her top was pulled down. Her attorney, Stephen Evans, also argued that she could be heard in the original footage saying "no" to a request to show off her boobies.

"Other girls said it was OK. Not one other one said, 'No, no,'" Evans said. "She is entitled to go out with friends and have a good time and not have her top pulled down and get that in a video."

This young woman made a bad decision. She was only 20 at the time and out at a bar drinking. She was dancing suggestively to the camera. She put herself in a bad situation, obviously. But does that mean she deserved to have her top pulled down against her will so that slime ball Joe Francis could make money off of her?

Even if we take the nudity completely out of the equation, is it ok to film or photograph a person and distribute the image for personal profit, without that person's expressed permission? The jury declared that she had given "implied consent" to have her image and her boobs put on a raunchy video that her future husband's friends might someday watch.

If we start that line of thinking, what can we say about girls who get date-raped? Oh, look what she was wearing; she ordered the lobster; she invited him in; she gave implied consent.

Girls should be much more careful with their actions, but nothing excuses the mistreatment of women.

What do you think? Did Girls Gone Wild take advantage of this woman? Or did she give implied consent?

Photo by Kristen Bons

Filed Under: feminism, in the news

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Comments (7)

sstepph

on Aug 5, 2010 at 9:52 AM

If she was doing it towards the camera, than yea I think she implied the consent. Seriously you think if you flash your breasts toward a camera nothing is going to happen?

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Facebook comment from Jennifer Riley

on Aug 5, 2010 at 10:04 AM

Her top was PULLED DOWN. She did not pull it down. I'd call this sexual assault by the shirt-puller, and assisted sexual assault by the GGW team. This is a dangerous precedent to set.

MomIWant

on Aug 5, 2010 at 10:26 AM

Haven't they been sued before for filming without consent? Joe Francis makes my skin crawl! If her shirt was pulled down by someone else, no way did she imply anything. IMO the mentality that you get what you deserve for dressing the way you did is ridiculous!

Nonmember comment from HC

on Aug 5, 2010 at 11:03 PM

I sympathize with the young woman in question on some levels, I don't know exactly what did happen, but this is something we have to face up to in this day and age, everything we do, pretty much all the time, has to be assumed to be potentially on-camera. This is an age where local governments are using Google Earth to track down illicit swimming pools, and what was a harmless prank in 1970, say streaking, is now probably instantly recorded on a dozen camera phones an on the Internet an hour later. The concept of implicit consent, very probably, is going to get stretched further and to cover more, simply because the technology makes it effectively impossible to do much else. I'm not crazy about that either, but I don't see a way to avoid it.

Nonmember comment from student2010

on Aug 6, 2010 at 8:01 AM

I agree that we can not say she asked for it based on how she was dressed. We have all dressed a little sexy at one time or another to attract the opposite sex. Most likely when we were looking to snag a new Bo or hook a husband. I think there are a couple of questions we need to ask before we place a label on this woman. 1) Did she throw her arms across her chest to cover her exposed breasts and remove herself from the eye of the camera by going to the restroom or better yet leaving the bar? 2) Did she resist at first and then subcomb to the atmosphere in which she was surrounded? 3)Was it the heat of the moment--her top pulled down and she was like what the H and said oh well, why not and started dancing around with the rest of the GGW? The third case scenario seems most likely to me. Now she is a little older, married, with children and her values have probably matured a little more and she is embarrassed by her actions. I think it is one of those things she needs to chaulk up as experience and use it as a tool to teach her daughters why they should always be aware of their surroundings and use their heads instead of their hormones to think with! If I would have seen a bunch of half naked girls hamming it up in front of a film crew at bar I would have left and went somewhere else. The economy is bad and trying to raise a family can be quite expensive and she may have seen this as an opertunity to supplement their income in BIG way!

Nonmember comment from SKL

on Aug 8, 2010 at 4:57 PM

I have to say, sometimes women take risks they should not take, and it's wrong to teach our daughters that they are always "the victim" when things don't go exactly as "they" want them to go. She made a mistake being in that environment, drinking (apparently underage) to the point where she lost her inhibitions, and willingly being a part of a video that she knew was not going to be shown in Vacation Bible School! No, they should not have pulled down her shirt, but is it really honest to say she had no way of knowing that might happen?

I feel similarly about many "date rape" situations. We act like it's OK for the woman to make choices that will get any healthy male "hot and bothered" and will make anyone think she wants to be intimate. It is unfair to put it all on the man if things go beyond what the woman originally pictured in her mind before the whole game started. What if it wasn't the man's intention to get all hot and bothered, can he sue/prosecute her for getting close and giving him "bedroom eyes" and inviting him into her intimate personal space? If we insist on setting the bar for "disipline" higher for men than for women, we are basically saying women are stupid and irresponsible by nature.

As for me, I'll be teaching my daughters to protect themselves before the fact, not cry "victim" afterwards.

Nonmember comment from DB

on Aug 14, 2010 at 8:29 AM

Here is the problem. GGW films in private parties put on by GGW, they have signs and notify all attending that they are being filmed and their likeness may appear on a video if they attend. Whether her top was pulled down by someone or not ,by attending that GGW party, she did consent to her likeness being shown on the GGW video.

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Unwilling Flasher Sues 'Girls Gone Wild' ... And Loses

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