Dunja MacAlister from Cape Town, South Africa shared the story on Reddit on Tuesday where it has captured viral attention with more than 61,000 upvotes and thousands of comments.
Ditching the swimwear for a little time sunbathing isn’t uncommon—in a 2013 survey by Expedia, 33 percent of beachgoers said they would never go topless at the beach, while others hinted that they might in the future or admitted they had in the past.
Germany is home to people most likely to opt for a bit of topless sunbathing, with 17 percent admitting have gone naked at the beach. In contrast, only five percent of Americans say they have gone nude at the beach.
MacAlister was at home when she decided to spend a summer afternoon catching some rays and laid out on the lounger. But earlier this week, she discovered that her sunbathing had been forever immortalized.
“My husband actually found the image and thought it was hilarious,” she told Newsweek. “He has to look up property lines often and while doing so checked out our house and then found the image.”
In the picture designed to mark out the property lines in the Cape Town neighborhood, MacAlister can be seen in the distance lying out in the yard.
“My first reaction to it was laughter,” said the sunbather. “I find it so funny that I thought I was secure in my backyard, free to sunbathe with no one looking, only to find this image now immortalized on a government website.”
After finding the image, MacAlister decided to share the funny moment with others online. “It is such a funny situation and what are the chances of the plane going overhead and taking pictures while I was out that day? Pretty high clearly,” she laughed.
In thousands of comments, people rushed to share their reactions and similar stories. One Redditor wrote: “I think this technically means you’ve posted nudes online,” while another said: “In good news, looks like ya got a nice butt even from 30k feet, so that’s an upside.”
“I just had to laugh at people’s comments,” said MacAlister: “I love that so many find it as funny as I do.”
Alongside jokes and laughter, other Redditors shared similar stories of being caught out during a sunbathing session.
“It wasn’t the government that messed this up for me,” said one reply. “It was one Christmas where all the neighborhood kids seemed to have received drones. Used to be able to go outside, use the pool, and grill in nothing but flip-flops. It was great. Now [there are] cameras flying about all willy nilly.”
But the accidental photograph hasn’t put MacAlister off sunbathing in her yard again.
“I mean look, they already have my picture, what else could happen?” she laughed. “But I probably won’t do it as much, because, as many people pointed out, it increases my risk of skin cancer, but I will still occasionally go out and enjoy some sun when it isn’t too intense.”
