On Instagram, we recently posted an amazing tattoo of an ultra realistic nipple, which covered a mastectomy scar. It’s by tattoo artist Kerry Irvine. After posting this image I suddenly thought, “is this breaching Instagrams rules on no visible female nipples?”
How ridiculous is that! Being worried that your page may get shut down due to a tattoo of what 50% of the human population own! Luckily our page is still alive and kicking, but in some small way I wanted Instagram to react to this and give us a warning but luckily they didn’t stoop quite that low.
Instagram have recently updated their community guidelines stating: “We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too.”
So we are allowed to keep the Kerry Irvine nipple tattoo… whoop! But what does “some photos of female nipples” actually mean? Are some nipples more visually acceptable than others? Maybe nipples of the small, pert, “normal” variety? Cara Delevingne has responded to the #freethenipple campaign by posting the below photo on her Instagram with other celebrities jumping on the feminist bandwagon.
But when searching #freethenipple on Instagram the main bulk of images using this hashtag were pages with names like ‘tits and ass’ ‘hotties land’ and ‘bikini shoutouts’ so maybe the feminist message has got slightly lost amongst the smut and “male admin” pages? (One page I found actually states it has a male admin just in case anyone mistook it for anything to do with feminism.) Can anyone tell me why the female nipple is not allowed but crotch shots with a pink thong covering a vagina are ? Yeah… I’m not sure either!
The latest Instagram backlash came when they removed an image of a woman asleep but showing where her period had leaked through her trousers onto the mattress. The photo was part of a project by the Canadian artist, Rupi Kaur and actually since then, Instagram have allowed her to re-post this image.
She responded by saying: “Thank you @instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique. You deleted a photo of a woman who is fully covered and menstruating stating that it goes against community guidelines when your guidelines outline that it is nothing but acceptable. The girl is fully clothed. The photo is mine. It is not attacking a certain group. Nor is it spam. And because it does not break those guidelines I will re-post it again. I will not apologise for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in an underwear but not be okay with a small leak. When your pages are filled with countless photos/accounts where women (so many who are underage) are objectified. Pornified. And treated less than human. Thank you.” Well said!
