Proving Snapchat photos last forever, a Los Angeles judge sentenced Playboy‘s 2015 “Playmate of the Year” Dani Mathers to a month of cleaning graffiti off walls after she posted an image of a nude, elderly woman showering at the gym.
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer applauded the judge’s decision, telling USA TODAY, “Body shaming can devastate its subject… People are mocked, they’re humiliated and in ways they can never fully get back.”
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The story goes back to last July, when Mathers captured the image in the locker room of an LA Fitness gym with the caption, “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.” NPR reports that she claims she intended to send the photo to one friend, but accidentally posted it to her story.
Whatever her intent, her photo went viral. The Playmate became more famous for her photography than her modeling, and went on the defensive. “That was absolutely wrong and not what I meant to do. I know that body-shaming is wrong,” she told NPR member station KPCC. “That is not the type of person I am.”
Her damage control failed. Local radio station KLOS fired her from her hosting job, and LA Fitness banned her. City Attorney Feuer charged her with one count of invasion of privacy.
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Mathers turned to the man who defended Michael Jackson against child molestation charges, Thomas Mesereau. As Mathers’s lead defense attorney, Mesereau requested leniency from the court in November. They rebuked him, according to the entertainment trade blog the Wrap, and Feuer celebrated. “Body shaming is humiliating, with often painful, long-term consequences,” he said.
Mathers settled for no contest, and will now be required to clean up the city’s buildings. “She really apologizes from the bottom of her heart for what happened,” Mesereau told USA Today. “She never thought this would come out like this.”
Few people did. In Los Angeles, a city obsessed with Playmates, moral superiority, and celebrity attorneys like Mesereau, Mathers’s case has become a bizarre cyber-bullying cause célèbre. This week, California’s Senate passed a new invasion of privacy bill. The next playmate to take a nude photo of an old woman without her permission will receive a $1,000 fine.
Mathers’s attorney, Mesereau, did not return Broadly’s request for comment.
