Playboy’s 2015 “Playmate of the Year,” Dani Mathers, 29, is under criminal investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) after she publicly shamed an unidentified woman at an LA Fitness gym by secretly snapping and posting a naked picture of her changing in a private locker room onto social media.
Mathers issued a public apology from her SnapChat account after the incident, but her critics are not buying it.
Mathers’s photo shows a more robust, unidentified naked woman in the gym’s private locker room behind her, accompanied by the caption: “If I can’t unsee this, then you can’t either” accompanied by a snap of herself covering her face with her hands.
A spokesperson for LA Fitness told Entertainment Tonight (ET):
Our written rules are very clear: Cell phone usage and photography are prohibited in the locker rooms. This is not only our rule, but common decency. Her behavior is appalling and puts every member at risk of losing their privacy. Her membership has been permanently revoked, at all our health clubs, and law enforcement has been notified.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “LAPD Capt. Andrew Neiman said the department received a report of ‘illegal distribution’ of the image and that detectives were looking into the matter. He said LA Fitness officials reported the posting to police.” The LAPD’s West division sexual assault section is reportedly investigating the incident.
After Mathers received backlash for her post, she issued a video apology in which she claimed she “accidentally” posted the photo on Snapchat, adding “I have chosen to do what I do because I love the female body and I know that body-shaming is wrong and it’s not what I’m about. It’s not the type of person that I am.”
She has also deleted her Twitter and Instagram accounts.
On social media, users called for Mathers to be permanently suspended.
L.A. Fitness on Friday reportedly issued a statement on Friday indicating that the company has permanently revoked her membership from all of its health clubs. The privately-owned American health club chain, which was established in 1984, has over 800 clubs across the United States and Canada.
However, Mathers’s woes have not stopped there. Online celebrity gossip website Perez Hilton has reported that Mathers, who has appeared regularly on the Heidi and Frank radio show on LA’s KLOS for years, was “suspended indefinitely from appearing on the radio program.”
Meanwhile, social media critics have not taken too kindly to the Playboy bunny:
Some even alluded to Mathers’ own insecurity:
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz