In October 2020, media on both sides of the ocean exploded with news: the popular rap singer Cardi B posted a photo of her bare chest in a story. She did it by mistake - the artist wanted to send the picture in private messages. She immediately deleted the photo, but the Internet remembers everything. The incident turned into a wave of hate and a boobsoutforcard response, in which the girls were naked in support of Cardi. Two weeks later, Instagram revised its policy on posting candid photos. But the main question is why in 2020 the breasts can still cause such a massive scandal.
On October 2020, Instagram has updated its policy regarding the posting of nude pictures. Thanks to the efforts of plus-size model and activist Nyome Nicholas-Williams (and many other women), neural networks will now distinguish between pictures of women holding or covering their breasts with their hands, and not block such pictures.
Girls (as well as non-binary persons and everyone whose breasts on the Instagram neural network can count as female), rejoice! Until now, you have not been allowed to bare your breasts, but now you can only aesthetically cover it if the amplitude of hand pressure on it does not exceed X. communications ”, which exempts social networks from responsibility for materials posted by their users. For the first time, Trump spoke about this initiative back in May, but now, with less than a week left before the elections, he has only strengthened his intentions. At an online hearing in the US Senate on October 28, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) noted that if the article is canceled, Internet platforms will be forced to resort to direct censorship to avoid risks. First of all, this case concerns political censorship, but one should not expect anything good from the fate of female nipples either.
Danger of the female breast: a little history
Out of fear of the law, social networks may begin not only to block content read by neural networks as "pornographic", but also to block its authors without the right to pardon.
In any case, this is how censorship still works on American television - recall the scandal with Janet Jackson's bare breasts. In 2004, during a performance at the Super Bowl (broadcast live by CBS), Justin Timberlake touched the singer's suit with his hand so that the audience could watch Miss Jackson's bare right breast for a whole second (the nipple was protected by the cover). The Super Bowl is an event that attracts millions of American families on TV (and it is the whole family who watch it), so the public's negative reaction was not long in coming. Janet was accused of deliberate provocation, violation of moral principles and other sins that can only be attributed to a woman whose breasts were seen by viewers.
Representatives of the national football league announced that they would never trust MTV to prepare for the Super Bowl again, and the FCC imposed a fine on CBS of $ 550,000. The reason is the numerous complaints of citizens who demanded to protect them from the "arbitrariness of TV men" who dared to violate all the rules of decency and show a program of sexual content during childhood (from 6 am to 10 pm). Jackson refused a public apology, which is why the general director of the TV channel Les Moonves canceled her appearance at the Grammy, and also bought the airtime of some radio stations so that they would not play the singer's songs.
This incident also led to changes in US legislation - fines for indecent content of television programs were raised from $ 27,500 to $ 500,000. Congressmen explained this need to protect the child's psyche: American citizens are very concerned about what their children can see on TV.
It is important to note that the US Constitution (Freedom of Expression Amendment) guarantees full protection of the content of pay TV channels - when you buy a subscription to cable TV or Netflix, you make the choice to receive this content at your own request. But what about social networks, where, on the one hand, you can model your feed yourself, and on the other hand, you constantly see random content?
If, after the presidential elections in the United States, conservative Republicans remain in power, who like to hide behind family values and caring for children at every opportunity, we (not only the Americans themselves, but also users of American IT companies' products) risk returning to 2004, and Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and many others will have to apologize for the pictures on Instagram.
Nipple question
Facebook's female nipple policy has a thousand and one bans. Now it is allowed to post photos of breastfeeding, mastectomy scars and works of art on Facebook and Instagram (but not photographs, even if their author is Mario Sorrenti himself). This rule also applies to digitally generated content (pictures), unless it has been published for "educational" or "humorous" purposes.
The company also makes concessions for content published with a social mission. “Our nude guidelines have become more elaborate and flexible over time. We understand that such images can be published for different purposes - including to express a protest, raise awareness of any problem, we allow the publication of such content. "
But what about just bare female breasts? Not calling for a revolution, not shown for educational purposes? Strict "no". For a long time I tried to find at least one Mormon among the top managers of Facebook, I searched all over Reddit for even a grain of information about Mark Zuckerberg's childhood injuries in the hope of finding at least something to justify this irrational fear of female nipples. Nothing. The site itself in 2015 explained its categoricalness by the fact that the App Store allows "spicy" content only if the application has an age limit of 17+ (Instagram has a rating of 12+, that is, the new qualification would significantly narrow the audience of the application) - about CEO of the company Kevin Systrom told Dazed Media at the event.
Adam Mosseri, who replaced him in 2018, justified the ban in a different way: according to Mosseri, moderation prohibits female nipples in order to avoid problems with the law due to the publication of child pornography and revenge porn - neural networks cannot determine the age of the girl in the photo, as well as understand whether she gave consent to the publication of the picture. But it looks like a measure sucked out of the finger - child pornography does not become legal if strategic places are covered with stickers, and the requirement to blot the nipples does not hurt to take revenge on the ex.
So, there is no place for female nipples on Instagram or Facebook. Where are they welcome? In fact, in general, nowhere - every year on the Internet there are fewer and fewer sites where a woman can proudly show her breasts to the world.
The last corner of freedom and haven for adult content creators was Tumblr. But in December 2018, the site's management announced that now the moderators will block any content with a rating of 18+. Not only materials depicting sexual intercourse and genitals were banned, but also female nipples again. The ban put an end to the era of sex-positive blogs and erotic photoblogs that the social network was famous for.
Twitter provides a positive example so far: posts marked as "sensitive media" are not deleted by moderators (by the way, Instagram also has this option). The social network does not at all set the task of fighting pornography as such, but monitors compliance with laws and promptly responds to user complaints. However, in order to retain the right to have content 18+, the company had to change the age limit from 4+ to 17+.
Women's breasts as the center of the patriarchal world
The key task of moderation of 18+ content is to combat illegal actions: involvement in sex work, pornography, publishing images of minors and advertising sex services. And the censorship of female nipples, on the one hand, creates the appearance of security before the law, on the other, it is an attempt to avoid the reputation of a platform for publishing sex content.
But the problem is not in the female breast as such, but in its sexualization. Women sleep naked, go topless around the house when it's hot, and wear sheer tops because they're trendy. And all this without any sexual connotation. The opinion that a woman undresses without fail in order to induce an erection in someone does not even send us back to 2004, but to a time when ladies risked being excommunicated from society for showing a knee from under their clothes. The breasts are just breasts, yet they remain the subject of heated debate. Does a blouse cutout justify sexual assault? How many breasts should a teacher show? Can a woman with a deep cleavage run a country?
Especially big breasts are affected. The fashion industry hates her - if it approves of any of its varieties, it is necessarily flat, almost boyish. Even Dior, in whose pool of ambassadors not only Bella Hadid, but also owners of quite lush breasts Jennifer Lawrence and Nina Dobrev, seem to refuse to admit the existence of sizes larger than the first - in any case, they do not sew clothes for breasts of other sizes. Sexuality for show in 2020 is "cheap, old-fashioned and not modern." If you have curvy breasts and want to wear a dress with a voluptuous neckline, it is suggested that you probably put your bust in your pocket.
How the state saves people from the chest
Breast censorship does not take into account the other side of the problem - women may want to be sexualized and have the right to make money on their sexuality.
In her column for Lenny Letters, model and wet dreaming heroine of half the world's population, Emily Ratajkowski, recalls the ridiculous attempts of adults to control her sexuality in her youth. “Girls like you need to stay in the shadows so that nothing happens to them,” they said to the 13-year-old, who was delighted with her first miniskirt, a D-cup bra, and admiring glances in her direction. Instead of giving her a can of gas or taking her to self-defense lessons, the family condemned her to shield her from the evil world, but that hardly helps. So why should we condemn Ratajkowski for using a resource other than a university degree to build her career, and worry about the fact that she earns her millions with her body and not with financial strategies and marketing presentations?
More seriously, the ban on breasts illustrates perfectly that there is no universal way to combat such complex phenomena as pornography and sex work. The latter includes not only prostitution, webcams, and filming in pornographic films. Erotic models and girls who develop an audience with half-naked pictures on Instagram are also part of this community.
“I am signing this bill in your honor,” Donald Trump announced to a group of sex trafficking victims in April 2018 at the White House signing ceremony for the FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficing Act) Internet censorship bill. “You have experienced something that no human being on earth should have to face, and we will do everything in our power to ensure that traffickers are quickly and firmly brought to justice.”
It would seem a good undertaking, but not so simple. The bill has received a flurry of criticism from both sex workers and human rights defenders - it combines human trafficking with the voluntary provision of sex services and puts all sex workers in the position of a victim, whether they consider themselves to be such or not. In addition, originally conceived to combat advertisements for sex services on online message boards, this bill has led to tougher censorship of erotic content on social media. A little after signing it, the same Tumblr, for example, changed its policy regarding nudity. These changes, in turn, only pushed women to trade in sex content more strongly: it became easier for them to sell their pictures on the paid portal Only Fans than to share them for free.
British sex workers and authors of the book Revolting Prostitues Juno Mack and Molly Smith report cases of clients boycotting escort agencies, forcing them to lower prices: prostitution in the UK is legal, but using sex is punishable by law. The fewer clients, the more power is in their hands, which puts prostitutes in an exploitative relationship with clients. A similar situation is happening now on online platforms.
Cleavage of discord
It would seem, what is the connection between the fight against prostitution and the blocked photo from the Pirelli calendar, which you shared on your Instagram for the love of beauty? The fact is that it is the awkward attempts to control the sex market, including on the Internet, that ultimately lead to the fact that your vacation photo is removed for the outline of the nipple under the white T-shirt. At the same time, the chances that Instagram will block a picture depicting, for example, the process of oral sex is much less. The association of voluntary sex work with human trafficking, and the work of female workers, with a process that will certainly humiliate a woman, inevitably encourages an exploitative attitude towards the work of both prostitutes and nude models, because it puts the client above the seller. And at the same time forms negative thinking towards women who are happy to share the beauty of their bodies for any other purpose.
The root of all the evils of social networks, television companies and respectable gentlemen together decided to consider it the breast (and not the bad working conditions of sex workers and empty bills). In any case, it was she who became a symbol of pornography, debauchery and coercion into sexual acts on the Internet. Yes, prostitution has existed since the beginning of time. Yes, pornography, its distribution and coercion to create it is a headache for intelligence agencies around the world. But it is the female breast, as a vessel of universal sin, that still remains the root cause of everything beautiful and terrible - in our lives and society. In 1972, screenwriter Nora Efron wrote an essay for the American Esquire about her too small breasts. Half a century later, Billie Eilish's already too big breasts outweighs all her Grammys in the media field. Naked breasts become Emily Ratajkowski's pass to Hollywood (remember the scene in Gone Girl) - and the reason why in her youth a photographer decided to stick to her, still receiving money for publishing pictures taken without her explicit consent. Nikki Minaj's left chest in the jacket that opens her turned out to be the main informational of the 2017 Paris Fashion Week.
Still, it’s surprising that chthonic bare chest seems to be the only constant in our crazy, crazy world.
Public display of the body is very ugly for me