Former Playboy Playmate Dani Mathers has been arrested and charged with invasion of privacy after secretly taking a photo of a naked older woman inside a gym changeroom and posting it on social media.
The 2015 Playmate of the Year could even face jail time if convicted.
Prosecutors accuse Mathers of surreptitiously taking the photo in the gym’s shower area. They claim the lewd photograph of the naked 70-year-old was uploaded to Mathers’ Snapchat account, where it ended up on her story.
She captioned it “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.”
Mathers’s act was illegal under California law. “You are not permitted in California to take photos without consent in specific rooms where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.
“Body shaming is humiliating, with often painful, long-term consequences,” said Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, who has filed charges against Mathers. “It mocks and stigmatises its victims, tearing down self-respect and perpetuating the harmful idea that our unique physical appearances should be compared to air-brushed notions of ‘perfect.’
“What really matters is our character and humanity. While body-shaming, in itself, is not a crime, there are circumstances in which invading one’s privacy to accomplish it can be. And we shouldn’t tolerate that.”
It’s been reported that the 70-year-old woman photographed by Mathers is prepared to testify.
Mathers is continuing to cop major fallout since the post went up. She has been banned from the chain of gyms where the photo was taken, suspended indefinitely from her gig on a popular LA radio station and castigated online forcing her to go into social media hibernation.
Before deleting her social media accounts, Mathers posted this apology as a Snapchat video: “I know that body-shaming is wrong and that’s not what I’m about. That photo was supposed to be part of a personal conversation with a girlfriend and because I am new to Snapchat I really didn’t realise I had posted it and that’s a huge mistake.”
