Sexual double standard in censorship of identical nude photos

After posting a cheeky nude pic to Instagram, Nadia Bokody discovered that there’s a massive double standard when it comes to censorship.

“Are you even wearing a bra today?”

I’ll never forget hearing a male colleague ask this across the office I worked at in my early 20s.

Though the question wasn’t directed at me, I remember feeling my face burn hot with shame for the woman on the receiving end of it, and never walking past that male colleague’s desk again.

The incident wasn’t reported. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding at the time that comments like this from men were best handled with an eyeroll and a laugh. And sometimes they were met with judgment from the other women in the office.

“What did she expect? Her shirt’s awfully thin,” an older peer in a nearby cubicle had sneered.

Nadia Bokody recalls an incident with a male colleague in her early 20s which left her feeling shame. Picture: Instagram/Nadia Bokody

Even in my early 20s, almost two decades before the #MeToo movement bought down the glass ceiling inhibiting women from calling out sexual harassment, I knew it wasn’t the outline of a nipple beneath thin fabric that attracted attention; it was the gender of the person attached to it.

Especially given no one ever blinked an eye over the full display of male nipple in the office every time the aircon went on full blast.

Today, while we might be better at recognising and calling out sexual harassment, we’re still grappling with viewing women’s bodies with the same level of neutrality afforded to men (particularly straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied white men).

A few weeks ago, I experienced this first-hand when I logged onto Instagram to find my latest post had been removed, with a warning I was close to losing access to the app for breaching its policy around “sexual solicitation”.

As someone who disseminates mainly feminist content and humorous quotes, most of what I publish tends to fly under the censorship radar, however this particular image was a deviation from my usual offering: a photo inspired by a promo shot singer Jack Vidgen had shared on his Instagram stories earlier that day, in which the singer was facing a mirror completely nude, cheekily covering his groin with a tennis ball.

Feeling uncharacteristically at ease in my body while away on my first solo holiday, and wanting to bask in the moment, I took a few snaps, picked one I liked, censored it, and nervously hit post.

Nadia Bokody’s post on the right was almost identical to Jack Vidgen’s photo – minus the nipples. Picture: Instagram.

But while Vidgen’s story stayed live for the rest of the day, a few hours later, my post had disappeared with a notification that read, “Your post goes against our guidelines on adult sexual solicitation.”

This was particularly striking, given the similarity of our images, which had nearly identical posing and exposed skin (in fact, my chest was covered, so I was showing less than Vidgen).

The implicit message appeared to be that a man’s naked body could just exist, while a woman couldn’t be unclothed without it being inherently sexual.

Though I appealed the removal and had the post reinstated, within 24 hours it was taken down again with a second, far more ominous warning from the platform that my account was about to be deleted.

Frustrated with the lack of clarity around what I’d done wrong and the apparent double standard in censorship, I posted my deleted image alongside Vidgen’s to my Instagram stories to emphasise the hypocrisy, but was slapped with yet another removal and reduced access to many of the features I typically access as a full-time content creator.

When I reached out to Instagram for an official comment to run with this story, though, I was met with a very different response.

“Your content was removed in error, and we have since reinstated it. Overall, we don’t allow nude images on Instagram or Facebook, but our nudity policies have become more nuanced over time,” a Meta spokesperson wrote.

A Meta spokesperson told Nadia that her content was removed in error and that it has been since ‘reinstated’. Picture: iStock

“Our policies are designed to ensure content on Instagram is appropriate for young people, while allowing a diverse and global community to express themselves. This can be a hard balance to strike and means there are times when our policies and detection systems fall short,” they went on to explain.

And while I returned to find the post back up and my account privileges reinstated just a few minutes later, I couldn’t help but wonder if so-called “detection systems” are helping make the platform better for young people at all.

In particular, I worry what we’re really doing when we censor and delete women’s bodies, is sending a message to girls that they are sexual objects, even when they’re interacting on social platforms in the same way as their male peers.

Nadia worries about what we are really doing when we censor and delete women’s bodies. Picture: iStock

I’m also concerned about what this says to men – whether it’s merely reinforcing the outdated idea they can’t be expected to control themselves in the presence of an erect nipple, flash of cleavage, or patch of exposed skin.

Social activists Morgan-Lee Wagner, Evelyne Wyss and Marco Russo noted this inequity back in 2016, when they created Genderless Nipples – an Instagram account highlighting the disparity between the way we view men and women’s bodies.

Using tightly cropped shots of nipples that evade Instagram’s controversial community guidelines prohibiting “female nipples” by making it impossible to determine the gender of the bodies they belong to, it shrewdly draws attention to sexist double standards around women’s bodies.

Though Instagram has been emphatic in its declarations around being an inclusive platform over the years, it’s hard to spend any amount of time on the app without noting the fact it mirrors much of the same sexual objectification of femme bodies that occurs in the real world.

In 2019, queer feminist site Salty conducted a survey which found LGBTQ people were more likely to report having their images flagged as inappropriate and their accounts deleted for community guidelines breaches with no further explanation.

And in 2020, model Nyome Nicholas-Williams, who goes by @curvynyome, famously pointed out the platform’s “no nudity” policy seemed to be particularly targeted at fat women and women of colour.

This came after an extremely G-rated image of her posing topless but fully covering her breasts – at a time when the Kardashians were posting far more explicit images – was taken down by Instagram, and Nicholas-Williams was threatened with account deletion.

Nyome Nicholas-Williams said the photos still being removed from Instagram weeks after she was told that the issue would be resolved. Picture: Instagram/curvynyome

More recently, Madonna publicly slammed the social media giant after a series of her photos were taken down.

“I’m reposting photographs Instagram took down without warning or notification,” the music icon captioned a carousel post in November.

“The reason they gave my management that does not handle my account was that a small portion of my nipple was exposed … As if that is the only part of a woman’s anatomy that could be sexualised. The nipple that nourishes the baby! Can’t a man’s nipple be experienced as erotic??!!”

Madonna was publicly slammed on Instagram after posting a series of photos of herself. Picture: Instagram/madonna

We may have better channels for reporting sexual harassment today, and a far clearer understanding of what it looks like, but if we’re still telling women their bodies can’t exist without being sexualised, it’s worth asking ourselves if we’re making any progress at all.

Because women’s liberation from sexual objectification doesn’t end with heavier fabric or tighter censorship, but with emancipating our bodies from needing to be covered and suppressed in the first place, in order to be fully humanised.

Follow Nadia Bokody on Instagram and YouTube for more sex, relationship and mental health content.