Section 1 :
FEATURED
NIP-SLIP
# FREETHENIPPLE
SO WHY NOT FREE THE NIPPLE ?
Or more specifically , why can ’ t WOMEN ‘ Free the Nipple ’? More and more women are getting removed , taken down or reported for an inadvertent bit of areola flashing on social media sites . Instagram refers to it as “ instances of abuse ”, Facebook deems it “ inappropriate ” and yet as we watch news stories on our feed of beheadings and torture , it is the nipple that ’ s causing the most controversy . Ironically , the nipple is the least of our worries !
Whilst a stray nipple is being , blurred , deleted or hidden on your social media , Facebook , and the Facebook owned Instagram - two online platforms that have so fondly turned us into the ever growing “ social media generation ” - are perhaps inadvertently supporting the ongoing argument that there is a deeper problem with online censorship which , rather depressingly , seems to be directed at women . Whilst there seemingly , will always be internet trolls roaming the web ( its an inevitable curse on the world wide web ) and reporting any inch of female nudity as ‘ wrong ’, why is it the web ’ s biggest and arguably most influential social media platforms that insist on censoring women for an innocent nip slip ?
At the end of last year , Facebook had 1.35 billion users and Instagram 300 million . They are platforms that championed free speech when first launched , globally connecting people young , old , black , white , male and female alike , acting as the catalyst for important social conversations , but now their arbitrary censorship of women ’ s bodies has put them in the firing line for the very conversations they first encouraged . In response to this censorship , Lina Esco bore the radical Free The Nipple campaign , a film based on real life , an equality movement , and a mission to empower women across the world . Standing against female oppression and censorship , both in the United States and around the globe , Free The Nipple has become a “ real life ” equality movement that ’ s sparked a world wide dialogue . Famous graffiti artists , groups of dedicated women , and influencers such as Scout Willis are “ fighting social media censorship and Freeing The Nipple .” Their mission statement believes that the campaign “ comes under a greater movement to reclaim the female body . ( That ) everyone should have the right to present their body on their terms . Woman can be sexual but they can also be mothers , daughters and sisters - all of which can exist at once , alongside however else they wish to present themselves to the world . At the end of the day , it ’ s just a nipple or two . Let them be free .”
With a following of around 40,000 on Facebook and 126,000 on Instagram , the Free The Nipple campaign is gaining momentum globally , and yet the war on social media censorship is arguably a lot harder to tackle . The film Free the Nipple , directed by Lina Esco , follows a group of young women who take to the streets of New York City topless , to protest the archaic censorship laws in the United States . Esco ’ s character believes that the fear levels associated with women being topless in public is “ right up there with being buried alive .” When she then runs topless through Times Square , she ’ s confronting those fears as “ an act of self-confrontation which I ( Esco ) believed to be essential , both for my personal evolution , and by way of understanding viscerally , the taboo-tyrannised dynamic I was trying to change ”. The film explores the contradictions in our media-dominated society , where acts of violence and killing are glorified , while images of a woman ’ s body are censored . So what is more obscene : Violence or a Nipple ? Esco argues that , “ an average American child sees over 200,000 violent acts including 16,000 murders on television by the age of 18 . But that ’ s cool so long as they don ’ t see a nipple on Facebook or Instagram .” Yet , according to Facebook ’ s recently “ clarified ” Community Standards , their restriction of “ female breasts if they include the nipple ,” is because “ some audiences within our global community may be sensitive to this type of content ” which arguably seems utterly farcical , when you ask to what reason is something so natural as a female breast “ sensitive content ” in comparison to a filmed beheading ?
14 JUICEBOX | GIRLS SUMMER |