I’ve been following the “Free the Nipple” initiative on Instagram for some time. In summary: some people are questioning – with deep dismay, should I add – Instagram’s policy which consists of displaying photos of young men parading shirtless, but prohibiting any photo with a female nipple, whether it is a frontal view, in profile or even almost suggested.
Sounds like a double standard if you think about it.
In doing so, Instagram implicitly (and ultimately, quite explicitly) validates the current socio-cultural standard according to which the body of a woman is significantly more sexualized than that of a man.
This suggests that Instagram is afraid of being mistaken for Pornhub.
It makes no sense, especially if we are talking about pictures of mothers breastfeeding.
It doesn’t make any sense, considering that a nipple, my God, well a nipple is a nipple. It’s the current cultural load that we put in the nipple that makes it almost pornographic, if I believe Instagram.
If I believe Instagram again, it is however completely normal and in no way sexualizing to take ultra-suggestive poses half naked, in a swimsuit or in lingerie.
Would Instagram want, from the top 1 billion of its users, to participate in a societal change? In other words, stop validating smoky theories that the nipple is the ultimate symbol of the sexualization of the female body?
Let’s be clear: it’s not that I’m madly keen to see tons of nipples scrolling through my Instagram feed, but I would at least like to see the double standard policy stop.
All nipples, male and female – or none at all – that is my credo.
Wake up, Instagram. Your politics are stuck in the 20th century. One can show a nipple and turn out to be the antinomy of sexuality, as one can be very dressed and be very suggestive.
The proof in pictures, which are more than a year old and were taken for an issue of Faust Magazine and that I never dared to publish because I precisely found these photos a little too suggestive for me.
Therefore, the proof in pictures, but with not a single nipple in sight.
June 19, 2020
Chantelle top – Zapa skirt – Vintage gloves – Joanna Delys necklace – Sergio Rossi heels – Photographer Joanna Dijkstra Delys
