Taylor Hanigosky
tmh004@marietta.edu
Instagram found itself wrapped up in yet another controversy last month over the deletion of a photo posted on its platform by Canadian art student Rupi Kaur. Kaur’s original post depicted a fully clothed woman curled up in bed with menstrual blood leaking through her pants and onto the sheets.
The photo was part of a project for her visual rhetoric course at the University of Waterloo, illustrating the natural cycle of a woman’s body in an attempt to confront the taboo surrounding menstruation.
Instagram initially offered no explanation as to why the photo was removed. Since Kaur believed the photo did not violate any of Instagram’s terms of use, she reposted the photo. After it was deleted by Instagram a second time, Kaur took to Facebook and Tumblr to bring attention to the incident.
“Their patriarchy is leaking,” Kaur wrote in a Facebook post on March 25. “Their misogyny is leaking. We will not be censored.”
Kuar received an overwhelming amount of support from social media users. Instagram responded to Kuar only after her Facebook post was shared thousands of times, offering this apology:
“A member of our team accidentally removed something you posted on Instagram. This was a mistake, and we sincerely apologize for this error.”
If this were an isolated incident, I may be able to keep my eyes from rolling at Instagram’s non-apology. However, Instagram’s transgressions against posts depicting the female body and feminist causes are showing a pattern. While some posts, such as Kuar’s photo and the Sticks and Stones Agency photo of two models with pubic hair peaking out the sides of their bikini bottoms, rise to Internet stardom garnering thousands of shares and supportive comments, there are many more non-offensive posts removed from Instagram that go unnoticed.
In an interview with Buzzfeed, an Instagram representative would not specify whether its employees actively search for violations, but said that a majority of flagged posts come from Instagram users. Instagram has also failed to address whether there are policies in place to deal with spammers who actively report non-offensive or feminist photos.
Considering the vast majority of Instagram users are women, it’s not shocking that the frequency of which the platform removes photos of feminine expression is causing tension. Sure, social media users can turn to sites like Tumblr that are considerably more open to diverse forms of individualism. (Even Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, clarified its policies last month to allow photos depicting women breastfeeding). But I think doing so disregards Instagram’s gross abuse of power. Instagram has shown that it prefers to reflect mainstream norms—by failing to address the double standards in its policies and reporting procedures—than to allow its users to express themselves freely. Whether or not the social media giant gets away with this will set a precedent for the dominance of patriarchal standards online.
