When I log on to the Eastbrook Neighborhood Facebook page, the posts from last night are gone. To my surprise, Jeff Crosetti has gotten right on it.
Googling fake Facebook account brings up page after page of results. I learn there are eighteen million fake Facebook accounts. That’s small comfort. According to one website, about one in eight Americans who have social media accounts has experienced revenge porn, the posting of nude pictures of them without their permission. The more I read, the more nauseated I become. It seems like so many women have experienced this and found little or no recourse from either the companies or the police.
I scan the comments below the article.
Help! Someone is using my name and photos on a multitude of casual-sex sites. I really need help on how to stop this! Tinder won’t help!
This is happening to me right now! It’s so scary … I feel like there’s nothing really to do about it. Hopefully this psycho closes the account, but I am freaking out. Getting tons of emails about casual-sex hookups.
Tinder and Facebook are no help! I even went to the police. Help! This is ruining my life.
Dustin’s words spring to mind.
The police won’t help you, but I can.
My phone trills, and I see it’s Valerie Simmons’s assistant. I shut down the tab of ghastly horror stories and answer. After a few pleasantries, Valerie herself comes on. She talks for a few minutes about her expectations for the shoot in her familiar sonorous voice, which I associate with doctor’s waiting rooms and other places where CNN is always on.
“Listen, Allie, I’ll be frank with you. I’m looking to reach a younger audience, and I want someone whose work is fresh and new and exciting, but—and this is important—I need someone who also understands that D.C. is a conservative place.”
“I totally get it. I’m talking with a senator who is putting out a children’s book and has many of the same concerns.” A small white lie. I haven’t spoken to Senator Fielding yet, but I’m confident Sarah Ramirez will come through with that introduction.
“Really? That’s exactly what I am talking about, straddling those two worlds. And I don’t mind saying that I love the idea of using a woman. More sensitivity. More discretion.”
Before getting off the phone, we make an appointment for me to meet her at her Kalorama town house on Monday morning. Finally, something is going right. After typing the details into the studio’s scheduler, I open my edits, newly energized.
There are fewer great shots of Sarah than I had hoped for, and I’ll be lucky to cull twenty good ones that are different enough from each other to justify the cost. I feel bad—Sarah is so sweet, but these photographs don’t capture how pretty she is.
In most pictures, her wide smile appears strained. Her mouth is frozen in a semi-grimace, and there’s panic in her eyes. In one, although her face looks pretty, her smile genuine and warm, the way her body contorts on the chaise compresses the flesh on the side of her bra into bulges of dreaded “armpit fat.”
I am tweaking a shot of Sarah lying on her side when Krystle calls.
“That is insanely fucked up,” my sister says, popping my good mood instantaneously. “Fake Facebook pages? A poll? I mean, that is so twisted. What does Mark say?”
“He says not to pay attention to online bullies.” I drag my little Photoshop paintbrush over to Sarah’s arm and magically do what no diet can: spot reduce.
She scoffs. “Typical guy bullshit advice.”
I scowl at the image on the screen. Sarah now resembles an alien, with an enormous head and sticklike limbs reminiscent of the praying mantis tattoo on my ankle.
“Holy shit,” Krystle says. “That’s the photo? God, you were so young.”
“You’re looking at it now?” A flush warms my face. That photo represents so much to me, a low point in my judgment and self-esteem. I actually thought my photography teacher was in love with me. That we would end up together, living happily ever after.
“Yeah, all the settings on your page are public.”
“It’s not my page, remember?”
“Sorry, fake page.”
With a few clicks, I restore Sarah’s armpit fat. Her boyfriend loves her. I’m sure he doesn’t care about a little superfluous pocket of flesh, even if Sarah does.
“You know, Allie, you should contact Facebook.”
I snort. “Thanks, Krystle, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“By the way, I am voting that you still got it.”
I grit my teeth. “That’s not funny. This is serious.”
“Do you think maybe, if it’s not Paul, it might be, you know, Madeline?”
The name startles me. “Do you mean Madeline Ashford? Why in the world would she do this?”
“Because she’s a little bitch, that’s why.”
“Was a little bitch. That was what, sixteen years ago? We were all little bitches then.”
“Oh my god, don’t tell me you forgive her.”
“Forgive’s not the right word. I just get it. She was mad. She wanted to hurt me. She didn’t realize what would happen.” I shut the editing down. I need to come back to it later, when I have some perspective. Right now, I worry I might do more damage than good.
“Right.” Krystle snorts. “She didn’t realize if she put up a nude photo of you and your photography teacher on MySpace that the shit might hit the fan? If you ask me, she’s suspect numero uno. Once a nutter, always a nutter.”
I sit back and sip my now-lukewarm espresso. Even though almost two decades have passed since that weekend, thinking about it sends my heart racing. Madeline Ashford was my one real friend at Overton, another outsider, although not because she was a scholarship student and not just because she was one of the few students of color, although that certainly contributed. She had a graceless honesty about her that rubbed people the wrong way.
But I liked her bluntness. And her bravery. It was as though she had the guts to say the things
