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NAKED: Could You Be Caught On Tape?There’s a nasty trend out there that could turn you into an unwitting soft-core porn star. Find out why a silly vacation stunt could haunt you for the rest of your life.By Stephanie Booth Three years ago, Linda Field*, now 32, decided to take a break from her job at a central Texas law firm and head down to Mardi Gras in New Orleans with her younger sister Shari. Along with thousands of other people crowded onto Bourbon Street for the annual pre-Lent celebration, Linda and Shari enjoyed the frenzied carnival atmosphere, watching parades, listening to jazz bands, and laughing at the throngs of women who, in Mardi Gras tradition, flashed their breasts to male revelers in exchange for plastic bead necklaces. A few evenings into their five-day vacation, Linda paused on the sidewalk and impulsively lifted her tee shirt to the crowd too. “It was totally out of character,” she admits. “But I was hundreds of miles away from home and caught up in the fun of it. I thought, When am I ever going to see these people again?” Flash-forward two years. A former colleague and friend stopped by to see Linda, now a successful attorney at a different law firm, and informed her that he’d seen her – topless – on a video called Girls Gone Wild Mardi Gras, which he’d just watched at his cousin’s house. “At first, I didn’t believe him. I thought it was a case of mistaken identity,” says Linda. “Then he described the exact scene from Mardi Gras when I’d flashed the crowd two years ago. A video camera had captured all of it.” Humiliated, Linda told her boyfriend, John, who encouraged her to forget about it. “We figured that maybe only this one guy had seen the tape,” says Linda. But when John was approached by a coworker six months later who said, “Hey, I saw your girlfriend on a tape!” and even the butcher at Linda’s supermarket was making comments about it, Linda realized her split-second decision to lift up her shirt could torment her for years. The Rise Of Reality PornWelcome to the new world of reality porn, where women bathing topless on the beach, vying for beads at Mardi Gras, or doing any number of potentially silly but risqué activities can be unwittingly turned into soft-core porn stars. It all started five years ago, when Joe Francis, a then-24-year-old producer of the independent video series Banned From Television, put a call out for footage of women flashing their breasts and letting loose at parties. Since that first hourlong compilation called Girls Gone Wild debuted in 1998, Francis has released a whopping 51 more titles to overwhelming success.Although Francis’s company, MRA Holding, doesn’t release sales figures, it’s estimated that 2 million Girls Gone Wild tapes are sold each year. According to VideoScan, a company that tracks sales from major retailers, GGW titles have made it into the Top 10 Adult Video and DVD lists in the past two years. (Francis now owns a private jet and is building a mansion in Los Angeles.) But besides earning Francis megabucks, these tapes have also launched a new trend in entertainment for men – from other video series like Wild Party Girls to Web sites boasting “real-girl content.” While subscriptions to old-school magazines like Hustler and Penthouse have dropped, reality porn is thriving. “Most men are getting tired of cookie-cutter port starlets, simulated sex acts, and gaudy productions,” explains one of the owners of Realgirlstv.com, a members-only Web site that promises, among other things, “65,500+ photos of drunk party sluts!” “Guys love the idea of catching the girl next door doing something she would not normally do.” But what about how the girl next door feels? “For a girl to be on Girls Gone Wild is a status symbol – it’s your 15 minutes of fame,” Francis has claimed. But several women strongly disagree, arguing that they didn’t know they were being filmed, never gave their permission, and were never paid for the footage by companies like MRA. In one case, a woman claims that she was plied with liquor before she was persuaded to enter a wet-tee-shirt contest and was then videotaped. “This is not fun and games,” says David Sergi, a lawyer based in Texas who is representing one of the women. “Do you really want topless pictures of yourself out there in public 10 years from now, once you’ve become a successful actress or lawyer?” Conniving CameramenUnlike regular porn, reality porn has often been shot not by professional photographers but by amateurs who stake out bars and beaches in vacation spots, a practice that makes the genre seem receptively non-commercial. Even regular-seeming guys who just happen to have a handheld video camera have gained worldwide distribution for their footage. Three years ago, Nikki Jones*, now 20, was at a gas station in Panama City Beach, Florida, when two college-age guys with video cameras approached her Nissan Maxima. It was Labor Day weekend, and Nikki, a student in central Florida, and three of her friends had spent their day cruising the strip and hanging out at the beach. The guys asked them to flash their breasts for what sounded like harmless vacation footage, even promising them some plastic beads like the ones given away at Mardi Gras. One of Nikki’s friends, 21-year-old Heidi*, gladly lifted her top. Nikki refused, but the guys didn’t go away. “C’mon. It’s just for us. No one else will see it,” they pleaded – so convincingly that for a split second, Nikki pulled up her tube top. She had completely forgotten about the event until more than a year later, when a friend from Texas called and said he’d seen Nikki on a Girls Gone Wild commercial shown during the Howard Stern show.“I was like ‘No way! I never did that!’ It took me two minutes even to place where I could have been filmed,” says Nikki. “At first, I was just shocked, then I got really mad. Those guys made a point of saying they would be the only ones to see the footage. If I’d known I would be on two separate videos and a national ad, I never, ever would have done it.” As if it’s not bad enough to find out your image is immortalized on tape, several women have been even more disturbed by the fact that they’re also being used to sell more of these products. In March 2000, Becky Lynn Gritzke, then a Florida State University business student, traveled to Mardi Gras with her boyfriend and two other friends, became swept up in the mayhem, and like Linda, briefly lifted her shirt. A month later, Becky’s business classmates mentioned they’d seen her in an ad for Girls Gone Wild. Becky’s humiliation didn’t end there. Soon after, she learned her topless photo was also on the Girls Gone Wild Web site, on the cover of a video, and even plastered on a billboard in Italy. (MRA has denied advertising in Europe.) Being BamboozledSome women even allege that alcohol was used to lower their inhibitions and get them to do kinky things. Two years ago, Amber Kulhanek, now 23, drove down to South Padre Island with some pals from Southwest Texas State University to celebrate spring break. One night, they crossed the border into Mexico and would up at a popular bar that was having a wet-tee-shirt contest. Amber says she was targeted by bar employees and given several drinks until she was wasted, and the next thing she knew, she was up in front of a crowd of strangers with her top off.Nearly 10 months later, Amber’s friends began mentioning they’d seen her on TV. Then strangers on the street began whistling at her and yelling for her to take off her top. As it turned out, footage from that wet-tee-shirt contest in Mexico had been taped for Wild Party Girls, a video series and Web site owned by Florida-based AccroMedia. A shot of Amber was even being used to promote the Wild Party Girls video on cable, a red strip proclaiming “Too Hot for TV!” stamped across her bare breasts. As a result of all the embarrassment, Amber began suffering from insomnia and depression and had to drop out of school temporarily. “Some girls may want to be on these videos, but they need to be given a choice when they’re sober and able to sign a consent form,” says Sergi, whom Amber has hired to help her fight back. “If you bought a girl a bunch of drinks, then took advantage of her because she was exceedingly drunk, you’d find yourself in jail for rape. In our opinion, the bar employees and agents of AccroMedia assisted my client in becoming intoxicated and got her to do things she would not otherwise do.” The Legal LoopholesEveryone has the right to privacy in one’s own home. But unfortunately, there is no specific law that says you can’t be taped in a public place, so the argument that a victim’s privacy has been violated isn’t particularly strong. However, some states have statutes against the unfair commercial use of such images. “A person’s going topless doesn’t inherently indicate agreement to be put on the Internet,” says Robert Ellis Smith, the editor of Privacy Journal. As a precaution against any claims of unfair commercial use, most mainstream filmmakers and magazines get signed release forms from anyone who is portrayed in their products. But women like Amber say they never signed any consent forms, and in the past year alone, at least four lawsuits – one against AccroMedia and three against MRA Holding – have been filed, and a class action lawsuit may also be in the works. Amber filed a whopping $5 million lawsuit against AccroMedia, claiming invasion of privacy and emotional distress. (The case is still pending.) Linda is suing for personal injury, while under a Florida state law, Becky and Nikki are suing for having their likenesses used for a commercial purpose without consent. (To complicate things, Nikki was also a minor when she was filmed and not even legally able to give consent.)Ronald Guttman, a defense laywer for MRA Holding, contends that these lawsuits are unfounded. “The majority of women enjoy the experience and indicate that it’s fun to be on the tapes. If you look at the films, you can see that,” he says. Domenic Massari, legal counsel for AccroMedia, agrees. Posing for the camera in various states of undress “Is a rite of passage,” he says. “It may be the last time these girls get to do something silly before they enter adulthood and are unable to party in the same way.” Nonetheless, both companies seem to be changing their ways since being sacked with lawsuits. Guttman says that official GGW areas are now set up beachside or at participating nightclubs, with crew members clearly identifiable in Girls Gone Wild baseball caps and tee shirts. Participants are asked for IDs and are required to sign release forms. Although visitors to GGW’s Web site are still given the opportunity to send in nude or seminude photos of girls, a consent form must accompany each submission (although such a form could easily be forged by someone else, like a disgruntled ex-boyfriend, for example). Meanwhile, Massari says that Wild Party Girls has contracts with only “credentialed” production crews, and all girls are asked if they want to participate before they’re filmed. “There are big signs up saying videotaping is going on. We’re not using briefcase cameras,” says Massari. “But we’re not the ones who put on the [wet-tee-shirt] contests in the first place. The club does, and we just tape them.” Protection From Reality PornBut don’t drop your guard just yet – it remains to be seen whether such reassurances will make a difference, and you’re still at risk of being shot by one of the many Web cams set up in bars in vacation spots around the country. The best defense is to go into partying situations with your eyes open and be on the lookout for cameras. Also, realize the risk you take by baring yourself in public. Although you may feel anonymous in a huge crowd, someone with the latest digital lens may not agree.If your topless dare in Key West does surface on the Internet, contact the Web master and ask to have your image removed. If that doesn’t work, consider taking legal action, although the battle may be messy and won’t ever fully restore your privacy. “You can get an injunction to stop the spread of videos or have pictures removed from Web sites,” says Harold J. Krent, the interim dean at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a privacy expert. “But it’s hard to control the damage to a reputation.” |