A teacher has been accused of having sexual contact with a student. That doesn’t sound extraordinary in itself, right?

Because this is the mainstream information media we’re talking about here, it’s expected of you to immediately assume guilt, especially in cases involving sexual conduct like this one, and look up the accused’s address so you can throw bricks through their windows.

Without paying mind, of course, to the fact that the key term here is “accused”, so that in the event that the supposed perp is acquitted, her name will continue to appear associated with the alleged crime in Google searches made by prospective employers for decades to come, along with her photograph, even though she may not have done it. And with some very elementary internet sleuthing skills, one can find her current address as well as every address she’s ever lived at, every phone number she’s ever had including the ones that have been returned to circulation for future Verizon customers, her email address, social security number, license plate numbers, and bank account statements.

She decided to do something about it. So here is what she did:

She smiled for her mugshot. And not just any smile, either. She smiled a big, bright, beaming smile.

Because if old media is going to go full tilt to attempt to demolish every trace of whatever life she may have had, the very least she could have done was deny them the ol’ killer’s pout.

So, what is it that she’s accused of? She supposedly had a sexual encounter with a 17-year-old student as she taught anatomy at a high school. No word yet on whether the encounter was intended as some sort of “special demonstration”, but this story already sounds like some half-baked porno.

Hello, elephant in the room. We all know that if the gender roles were reversed, we’d be reading a very different story. Women are treated far differently by the criminal justice system, which largely stems from the fact that in cases involving sexual impropriety, the presumption of guilt is usually on the man, as though it was never the woman’s idea. Even if he were entirely sure that he would not be convicted, if in the same position and charged with the same crime, managing any smile for a mugshot would demonstrate a thorough detachment from the reality around him that was kicking his butt up around his ears, figuratively speaking. Literally speaking, it would likely be seizing his home and cars, emptying his bank account, writing up tons of legal fees, taking his children into “protective” custody, enabling his wife to divorce him, and making him live in a tiny cell where he eats garbage and sleeps around people who want to stab him.

Go ahead and smile, Sarah Fowlkes. We know you tried as hard as you could.