Overview

Ocasio-Cortez' Fake Nudes refers to a controversy wherein a picture of a woman in a bathtub was falsely attributed to congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The claim it was Ocasio-Cortez was quickly debunked by a contributor to Wikifeet, a website for foot fetishists. The controversy reached mainstream media attention when conservative site The Daily Caller published the photograph with a misleading headline implying that it could be Ocasio-Cortez.

Background

On January 5th, 2019, Reddit user PKCockSuck posted an image of a woman in a bathtub to /r/drama.^[1] The picture had been edited to attribute the photo to congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, posted to her Instagram in 2016 (edited image shown below).

Developments

In the ensuing thread, user jokes_on_you^[2] debunked the claim it was Ocasio-Cortez by pointing out he was a contributor to Wikifeet, a site for foot fetish enthusiasts, and that they had never seen a second toe like the one in the photo. They also provided a photo of Ocasio-Cortez' feet for comparison to show that the woman in the bathtub photo could not be her. Vice^[3] reported on the story and interviewed jokes_on_you to find out how he could tell it was a fake. Jokes_on_you stated:

"I’ve sucked enough toes in my life to recognize when something doesn’t look right… Because we can’t dorsi- or plantarflex our 2nd-5th toes independently I knew it wasn’t a matter of the toe being bent. I thought that maybe she has some form of brachydactyly but her Wikifeet page has clear evidence to the contrary. So it was clear to me that it wasn’t her feet."

Furthermore, someecards^[4] identified the woman in the bathtub photograph as Sydney Leathers, who was one of the many women who had exchanged sexually-explicit direct messages with Anthony Weiner.

Daily Caller Article

On January 8th, 2019, conservative site The Daily Caller^[4] ran the story with the headline "Here’s The Photo Some People Described As A Nude Selfie Of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez." They also tweeted the story with that headline (shown below).^[5] Both the article and the tweet have been deleted.

The Daily Caller's presentation of the story was criticized as salacious and misleading. Political reporter Adam Serwer said "The daily caller decided to post fake revenge porn because they don’t like AOC’s politics," gaining over 1,100 retweets and 4,600 likes (shown below, left). Ocasio-Cortez responded by saying it was an example of how women in politics face more scrutiny than their male counterparts (shown below, right).

The Daily Caller responded via tweet that they rapidly deleted and fixed the original headline and that they regret the error.^[6] Daily Caller editor-in-chief Geoffrey Ingersoll also reiterated the regret in an interview with The Wrap.^[7]

Search Interest

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External References