Watching the Natasha scenes of Iron Man 2 again, it strikes me that Natalie Rushman’s modeling pictures were probably among the SHIELD files that Natasha blasted out to the world. Following this train of thought, it occurred to me that there’s a very decent possibility that the in-universe media (and the internet, of course) would somehow manage to always bring the focus back to that, more so than the red in her ledger or her incredible accomplishments with SHIELD. Concern trolls would call her self-respect into question, her skills would be underrepresented, and her worth as a person would be weighed by whether some creepy random guy in the comments section of an article finds her pictures hot or not. So in the end, the fallout isn’t just about Natasha dealing with the threats caused by exposure or the vulnerability of having no covers to hide behind, it’s also about being the butt of a million crude jokes on Twitter. It’s about being dismissed, despite the fact the entire world knows exactly what she’s capable of now, because hey, we’ve seen her in her underwear and, according to his post, bronyfriendzoney69 thinks her tits look great. (Thank goodness for that. Where would Natasha be without his stamp of approval???)
And we know that this is how it would all go down due to the simple and incredibly depressing fact that this is exactly how Natasha is treated in fandom and media now.