During a recent Periscope session, former WWE Superstar Melina Perez spoke at length about how she dealt with the controversy and embarassment of her nude photos leaking online years ago.
“That was kind of a horrific experience in my life,” Melina said. “Because that was something very intimate that I was sharing with the love of my life. For somebody to steal that kind of stuff and put it out there. That was really horrible. That’s kind of the way it was comparable to my rape in a sense because it was violating.”
Melina would go on to elaborate, explaining in great detail how everything went down.
“So the person who stole those pictures that I sent to someone I cared about and love, it was an intimate thing between two people who love each other. It was a horrible thing for someone to do. It was something that I needed to learn like I had to cope with, I just don’t want it to happen to anybody else. I’m thankful that I was able to overcome that like my mind was able to process that to be able to be okay with it. That’s a horrible thing too especially as a woman.
“When you get taught that your body and you as a sexual being needs to be clean and untainted. People always want women to be a virgin like untouched like they’ve never slept with anybody but the fact is that we are human. I wish I could only be with one person but then you break up, or they leave you, or life happens and you go separate ways. Women are humans, so when it comes to pictures like that, we’re seen as things and they took it and just threw it all over the place and it’s a horrific thing to do that to a human being like me who was brought up being taught with what I grew up with. Your body shouldn’t be looked at by anybody but your love.”
From there, she spoke about how she had actually turned down an opportunity from Playboy to appear nude in their magazine, something that has traditionally been a pretty significant move in the career of an emerging WWE Superstar, yet still nude photos of her were everywhere anyways.
“I refused Playboy because I wanted to keep from being seen and to only be there for the person that I love. It was a huge hurtful experience. So thank you for feeling sorry that those things happened to me, thank you for that. But it is what it is, sadly. It’s wrong. People should never do that and because I’ve been able to accept that as something that happened. I would like to see that happen to the person who posted all those things and did all that stuff. I mean they wouldn’t like it. Thank goodness I looked good. But at the same time, it is hurtful, it is horrible.”
(H/T to WrestlingInc.com for transcribing the above quotes from the Melina Perez Periscope session.)