Taylor Hanigosky
tmh004@marietta.edu
It’s not often that multi-million dollar companies admit to their mistakes.
But luckily for women, Instagram just did, making the Internet a little more accepting of natural beauty in the process.
On Jan. 21, Instagram reactivated the account of Sticks and Stones, an Australian-based fashion agency, in response to criticisms that the page was deleted because of a photo showing two women with pubic hair peeking out the sides of their bikini bottoms.
The story just barely cracked the surface of mainstream media, appearing briefly on Huffington Post and mic.com last week. However, the incident deserves wider attention, as it alludes to larger themes including the social expectations of a woman’s body and the power of social media companies to regulate expression on their platforms.
Instagram took three weeks to reinstate the account after initially arguing the photo was in violation of its terms and conditions, which state that a post on its platform cannot “be violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory, unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or sexually suggestive.” The photo walks the line of “partially nude,” but there is a difference between nudity of a sexual nature and nudity of a non-sexual nature. Compared to other content that is posted to the platform (anyone follow Miley Cyrus’ feed, or see Paper Magazine’s photo of Kim Kardashian’s well-oiled and photoshopped bum?), Sticks and Stones’ photo isn’t nearly as suggestive.
Sticks and Stones founder Ainsely Hutchence believes the photo never would have been taken down if it weren’t for the female pubic hair. There is some evidence that suggests she is right. In 2013, Toronto-born artist Petra Collins lost her account after posting a waist-down photo of herself in her underwear, sporting an unshaven bikini-line.
Hutchence alludes to the sexism at the heart of the issue in an interview with C-Heads Magazine, “It’s completely okay for men to have pubic hair showing at the top of their Calvin Klein’s, but this is entirely unacceptable for a women.”
In a society where hair removal is an industry and the media propagates harmful messages that target women’s self-esteem, women are disproportionately pressured to fit the mold of expected or acceptable beauty, often altering their bodies to conform.
But this is not a new problem. Women feeling shameful and unfeminine because of their natural pubic hair—and all the other parts of our bodies we’re taught to cover up or change—is a complex social issue that will take time and energy to reverse.
However, what parts of their bodies women can and cannot post on social media is a new problem. Most users interpret these platforms as places for free expression and communication. Instagram’s latest hand in trying to standardize its site, temporary as it was, calls into question the authority of social media corporations to enforce societal perceptions of beauty across the Internet. When social media enables the interaction of so many cultures with individual sets of norms, policing accounts for “inappropriate content” becomes more ambiguous.
“We can’t base censorship on [one] perspective because everyone’s perspective is so different,” Hutchence said in an interview with C-Heads Magazine. “Especially for an international business who would have to take into account every culture, religion, etc. The only alternative would be absolutely no censorship.”
Instagram took a step in the right direction. Reinstating one account after controversy over a little hair-down-there isn’t a solution. Societal degradation of the female bush is everywhere. However, Instagram’s decision sets a new precedent for broader interpretation of self-expression.
