You In the Nude?

Recently, a reader wrote in to ask my opinion of her new boyfriend's request that they exchange nude photos via email. At the time, I thought it was a no-brainer. Why would any intelligent person consider doing such a thing, especially in the Internet age?

I wrote to tell her that it was a terrible idea. Since then, I've learned that taking nude photos and performing in homemade porn flicks rivals the popularity of, say, the craze for brewing one's own beer in the early 1990s.

For example:

A couple of weeks ago, a mild-mannered, churchgoing man told me that he threatened a neighborhood teen not to copy or distribute a sex tape in which the boy appeared with the man's daughter.

And...

A newlywed couple invited their parents over to view footage from their Caribbean honeymoon. They accidentally screened parts of it that should have been kept in the dark.

And...

While cleaning out a closet, a teenage girl came across a stack of nude photos of her older brother and his wife.

Do you get where I'm going with this?

Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and now Vanessa Hudgens (that's V in the photo) have shown up on the Internet in the buff, and it amounts to brilliant publicity. They're celebrities. But for real people like you and me, posing nude or performing sex acts for the camera inevitably results in disaster.

Resist all temptation.