Despite the app's controversial policy against nudity
Kendall Jenner found a clever way to #freethenipple on Instagram.
The model covered her nipples with pizza emojis in an Instagram posted on Saturday as a way to get around the social media platform’s much-scrutinized community guidelines, which ban nudity. In the past, the platform has removed semi-nude photos posted by Rihanna, Chelsea Handler and Miley Cyrus.
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Instagram has faced frequent criticism for its handling of explicit photos on the service. After the platform received heat for removing a number of photos showing mothers breastfeeding or breast cancer survivors showing their mastectomy scars, Instagram revamped its policies in April 2015 to explicitly exempt those photos from its nudity policy. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said at an event in October 2015 that the app’s controversial policy was mandated by Apple, which bans nudity on apps with ratings under 17+.
But some women aren’t happy with that reasoning, and argue that taking down photos of nipples suggests that female breasts are shameful. Free the Nipple, a movement sparked by a 2012 documentary by director Lina Esco, has fought to allow women to bare their breasts — in public and on social media. Women have staged topless protests, filed lawsuits against state’s nudity laws and complained to social networking platforms about strict nudity guidelines. “Why can you show public beheadings from Saudi Arabia on Facebook, but not a nipple? Why can you sell guns on Instagram, but yet they will suspend your account for posting the most natural part of a woman’s body?” Esco wrote in a blog post in 2013.
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And Jenner, who has posted a number of semi-nude photos on her social media platforms before, clearly agrees.
“I really don’t see what the big deal is with going braless,” Jenner wrote in a blog post on her website earlier this year. “It’s sexy, it’s comfortable, and I’m cool with my breasts. That’s it!”
