Is your body bikini creepshot ready? Because it’s Strange Dudes You Don’t Know Taking Pictures Of You In a Bikini Season!
On one beach in southern Virginia, a man known to local police for hanging back in the bushes with a fancy camera and snapping candid shots of bikini-clad women who don’t know they’re being photographed was banned from Yorktown Beach yesterday, after beachgoers noticed him lurking and became alarmed. According to an incredibly local news-tastic report by News Channel 3, the local 51-year-old wasn’t arrested and his camera wasn’t confiscated, but because local law enforcement has the right to bar individuals from public parks, he’s not allowed on the beach for the rest of the summer.
Apropos of nothing, part of this video where the reporter demonstrates photography by taking fake pictures of beach scenery deserves a goddamn Emmy. It’s beautiful. I’m crying.
Anonymous 51-year-old Virginia Creep is far from the first person to take unauthorized photos of women on the beach ostensibly for the purpose of getting off on them. A few years ago, a Swedish court acquitted a man who took photos of women in bikinis on a public beach. This repeat offender in Milwaukee was arrested twice in as many years for doing the same on a beach in Wisconsin. Here’s another.
I’m sure men have been snapping photos of unsuspecting women in bikinis on beaches ever since wearing a bikini to the beach began being A Thing. But in the age of ubiquitous smartphones and the ability to instantly share photos on one of zillions of creepshots forums on the web, appearing in a state of undress in public without having your image broadcast to an army of internet masturbators has never been more quixotic sounding a hope.