Over 100 women strip naked outside Facebook HQ to protest nudity ban

Outside the Facebook headquarters in New York, over 100 women stripped completely naked last Sunday to protest the social media giant’s rigid stance on nudity. This protest was organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) alongside photographer/ artist Spencer Tunick. This brazen stunt featured nude model’s nipples and their genitals ‘with stickers of photographed male nipples to highlight the rigid — and anachronistic — gender inequality in existing nudity policies,”

In a We the Nipple statement, NCAC stated, “The human body has always been a central subject of art. Its representations have evolved with technologies of expression: from cave drawings to sculpture and painting, to photography and video.” They go on to add, “Yet leading 21st-century social media platform, Instagram, the most popular platform for artists who share their work online, and its parent company, Facebook, both ban photographic representations of the nude body, while making an exception for artistic nudity in sculpture and painting.”

Even after this artistic protest was staged, and carried the hashtag #WeTheNipple — photos from the protest that were motivated by this campaign were concealed on social media; NCAC went on to say. In fact, all posts pertaining to this movement were taken down on Instagram the next day due to ‘community guidelines.’

In a statement, Svetlana Mintcheva, Director of Programs at NCAC went on to add, “We recognize that moderating content for billions of users is challenging and draw the line between art and images that are not art is hard.”  She states, “Yet if Facebook and Instagram want to be platforms for artists, they need to modify their current overbroad ban on photographic nudity, which harms artists who work with the human body, especially those exploring issues of gender and identity. We urge the company to adopt an art-friendly policy developed with the help of a group of global stakeholders, such as arts advocates, historians, curators and artists.”