INSTAGRAM’S DOUBLE STANDARD
CELEBRITY AND CIS-SEX-SELLS
Instagram is a two headed monster. One side is an amazing venue for visual creativity and community outreach. The other side is one of celebrity, excess, and a mainstream cis-sex-sells mentality.
Chiara No has a great example of the double standard Instagram delivers. At one point an image of her bare behind covered by her hand was deleted. The artist was shocked since accounts like @justthongs post revealing hyper sexualized images of butts daily with no apparent recourse.
In another example Micol Hebron found it shocking that her work (including female nipples) is banned while Justin Bieber (135 million followers) can post a clear shot of his butt ( though subtly blurred at the crack). There is a double standard here between celebrity “influencers” supporting a mainstream sexualized ethos and those members of smaller communities who flaunt conventional beauty standards.
Artist Tiffany Saint Bunny points out that when a picture of “singer” Miley Cyrus showing her nipples was reported, Instagram had no problem with the inherent nudity involved.
Artist photographer @__Adey__ is a great example of this double standard. Even though she has over 90k followers, Adey’s account was removed after posting the image on the right. On the left is a post by Kim Kardashian that did not fall under the same scrutiny. Is Kim Kardashian’s blurry nipple really the panacea to Instagram’s prudish robot police or is something else going on here?
Image: www.artistsagainstcensorship.com
The examples of double standards on Instagram are endless, however this case study with two images showing women’s crotches is particularly interesting. The image on the left from OnaArtist remained on Instagram, where the image on the right from TruckSlutsMag was deleted. The discernible difference is pubic hair on the removed image. What does this say about Instagram and our culture that pubic hair is the only violating factor here?
