Earlier this month, Facebook changed its policy on nudity and obscenity to ensure that photos of breastfeeding won’t be flagged and removed from the site – even if a nipple is pictured.
Activists have been pushing Facebook to address what they say is a double standard in the way they regulate explicit content. Although Facebook’s Community Guidelines have never included a ban on breastfeeding photos, the site does have a strict policy against images of women’s nipples. Images of women breastfeeding, as well as photos of breast cancer survivors showing their mastectomy scars, often times end up getting removed.
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has been plagued with some of the same controversies, as users’ accounts have been deactivated for posting photos of themselves breastfeeding their child. (Or posting their boobies; Hi Rihanna.)
Both Facebook and Instagram’s policies now state that photos of breastfeeding do not violate their terms of content and note that users are free to post those kinds of images.
“We agree that breastfeeding is natural and beautiful and we’re glad to know that it’s important for mothers to share their experiences with others,” both sites now state.
The verdict is still out on how Facebook’s new policy will work. One parenting blogger posted a photo of herself breastfeeding to test the new content guidelines and Facebook initially took it down. She went back and forth with the site’s administrators for several days before it was restored.
In Colorado, a mother says that her account was temporarily suspended after she changed her profile picture to an image of her breastfeeding just last week. And last month, a young woman received backlash for snapping a photo of herself breastfeeding her daughter in a cap and gown at her college graduation.
SOURCE: ThinkProgress | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty
