When Rihanna posted her Lui Magazine cover images, in which she happened to be topless, Instagram wasn’t having it. Within 60 minutes, the photo-sharing monolith had taken them down, warning the pop music sensation that nipples went against their no-nudity policy and that if she violated the rules again, she would have her account taken away. Rihanna was understandably miffed, but no matter: she just posted the images to Twitter and responded to Instagram with a witty meme that features a make-under image by artist Danny Evans.
What do you think? Are Instagram’s “decency” rules reasonable, or are they antiqued and sexist? We know that social media websites sometimes have a way of enforcing stricter nudity policies when it comes to women; a cartoon from The New Yorker, for example, was banned from Facebook for featuring female nipples, and yet cartoons depicting heterosexual sex were permitted. In this case, it’s hard to judge, in part because adult magazines like Lui rarely feature nude men. It’s a sad paradox: female stars are very much encouraged to bear skin for magazines, and yet when they reveal and celebrate the images on their terms, they’re censored. Let us know what you think in the comments!
