Dear Instagram, I love you but youâre bringing me down
Womenâs bodies are not inherently offensiveâitâs abusive people who produce offensive content. Make those people your targets. Focus on promoting a community where misogyny is unacceptable. Hereâs a clue: Women arenât responsible for misogyny. Assholes are.
Dear Instagram,
Hi. This is an open letter. No, Iâm not Taylor Swift, but I do have 500 followers (almost) and I love you, so you should listen to me. Iâm writing to ask you to change your community guidelines. You ban female nipples, but allow male nipples. As a result of these skewed standards for nudity, womenâs bodies become oversexualizedâsetting them up to be censored, targeted, and abused. Not cool. So, could you please stop? Hereâs why:
Lady Gaga Instagramming
1. You look sillyICYMI everyone is laughing at you and your rules.
Exhibit A: Orange Is the New Blackâs Matt McGorry highlights the absurdity of censoring female nipples by photoshopping two very famous female nipples (Crissy Teigenâs and Miley Cyrusâ) onto his not-so-famous male nipples. Heâs kinda breaking your rules by not breaking them to make fun of them. And heâs not the only one.
How many emojis need to carry the burden of this absurd rule before we can collectively move on?
Emojis belong in captions. Not on nipples.
2. Itâs not working, anyway
Bo Derek
3. Youâve made the entire female body a target
Creating a culture in which photos of nipples âbreak the rulesâ has made the entire female body tabooâan illicit thing to objectify and attack. Posts are being taken down that show breast feeding, stretch marks, and periods. Even posts of bikini tops with fake nipples on them have been targeted! And wait, being curvy now isnât okay, either? I canât keep up with all the ways that it is not okay to be a woman. Can we live?
4. Youâre fighting the wrong fight
Keeley Hawes
Womenâs bodies are not inherently offensiveâitâs abusive people who produce offensive content. Make those people your targets. Focus on promoting a community where misogyny is unacceptable. Hereâs a clue: Women arenât responsible for misogyny. Assholes are.
Focus on those assholes â. Delete their posts. Cheesegrater? Really?
5. Itâs time
Itâs 2015. Love is love. We made it to Pluto. My name is Caitlyn. My watch talks to me. We can have nipples on Instagram. We are ready.
Stacey Alden
6. Youâre better than this
Seriously, you guys are awesome. Your values of community, creativity, and innovation are why we love you. Theyâre why more than 300 million people use Instagram to express themselves, meet each other, and explore the world. You have literally changed peopleâs lives. We know you have it in you.
Milla Jovovich
7. Women are kinda your thing
Girls run the world, so naturally, we also run social media and dominate on Instagramâ68 percent of Instagram users are women. You are neglecting your best player. Put us in, coach!
Sigourney Weaver
As feminist champion Cindy Gallop likes to say, âThere is a huge amount of money to be made out of taking women seriously.â Iâm no economist, but I am willing to bet that being nicer to women = $$$$$$$$$$.
Currently, your policies limit, shame, and anger your biggest asset. Changing your rules will only make women love you more.
Free the Nipple has 177K followers. I donât see a âCage the Nippleâ movement, do you? Oh wait, âCage the Nippleâ does exist, and it has 0 followers.
8. The world wonât end
Making female nipples âlegalâ on your platform will normalize them and allow them to be something more than sexual objects. And you know what? Instagram will not burn down. Itâll just look a little like a beach in Europe. Some of the women are topless. Some arenât. Everybody is fine. The kids are all right.
9. Equality and stuff
Even if it wasnât time, even if it wasnât easy, even if it wasnât good for youâchange your policy because itâs the right thing to do.
Gabrielle Drake
You will be taking a stance for womenâs rights. You will be saying to the world: Women should abide by the same rules as men. Women should not be ashamed of their bodies. Women are not sexual objects. Women are beautiful. Women should be respected. We love women. FIRST LIKE.
Kathleen Robertson
We know youâve been thinking about this stuff. You have made slight changes to your community guidelines recently, allowing photos of mastectomy scars and breastfeeding. This is great. Youâre almost there! Change your definition of nudity to be equal for men and women.
Better yet, post a photo to show us where you stand. You know what they sayâŠ
But really, Instagram. I love you so hard. Thatâs why I care.
Instagramming Jaime Pressly Style
Daisy Lowe
Emma Watson
Larissa Riquelme
18 year old Jessica Biel in Gear Magazine