Butts. We all have them, and there's a new Instagram trend showcasing butts on vacation.
Cheeky exploits is both the name of a hashtag and of a standalone Instagram account featuring lots and lots of bare butts. Man butts, women butts, butts of all genders, shapes, and sizes.
Here's how it works. You go on vacation, or just exist somewhere in the wild. Then you remove your pants, or at least lower them so that the butt part of your body is visible. Then you or your partner or friend (or whatever) take a picture of your bare butt in a public area. Here are some examples, in case you've forgotten what butts look like.
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See? Butts. Let's briefly unpack the ways in which this can be problematic before moving on to just like looking at pictures of butts because it's Sunday. First of all, public nudity is an obviously complicated issue. Subway harassment, street harassment, and the old fashioned flasher are major issues facing us in our day to day lives. This is not that. This is joyous, celebratory, and not aggressive at all. This is butts. Like, mooning people is objectively hilarious. You're showing them your butt, is the concept.
The Independent offers a hilarious, tone-deaf, and sex-negative opinion of the trend. Though writer Julia Buckley allows that the butt posters might think of themselves as fearless, they're in fact bad.
"But the photos don’t say fearless to me," Buckley writes. "Derivative, maybe. Attention-seeking, definitely. Desperate, probably. Offensive: indisputably. And not because of your naked bottom – as you keep saying, every time we look appalled, we’ve all got them; but because of the disrespect to the locals that you convey."
Ah, yes. Locals. Don't show your butt to people that don't want to see it, is probably a good guideline. But if you're going to go on Instagram just to get your dander up because somebody offered their full moon over Miami, I believe you should maybe focus on something a little more worth your time. You could donate to the ACLU. You could write a poem for your loved one. You could just like chill out and look at some cool butt pics in exotic locations. Listen, I don't know your life. But I do know that this is all a bit (or butt) of fun.