Instagram Discrimination is Real
One of these photos is accepted on Instagram, and one of them is not. Take a guess.
When scrolling through my Instagram or Twitter feed, it is not surprising to pass a photo of a half-naked female. If you follow any variation of a “fit-inspo” account on either of these sites, you are absolutely guaranteed to see at least one lady baring it all every single day. So, why was a college girl’s Instagram account deactivated for doing the exact same thing as the rest of the world? After all, no one tells Kendall Jenner to cover up on the runway. It’s a reason that dwindles down to something as simple as her size.
According to Cosmopolitan Magazine, Samm Newman learned to accept her body when she went to college and di
scovered “a growing body positivity movement.” Apparently, the movement didn’t stretch too far and its boundaries were found within the walls of Instagram.
Newman is right when she says that smaller women have been seen wearing much less without any flagging or reporting going on. After some publicity, Instagram released a statement that said, “When our team processes reports from other members of the Instagram community, we occasionally make a mistake. In this case, we wrongly removed content and worked to rectify the error as soon as we were notified. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
But my frustration extends much further than to the monitors of Instagram. It flows to the users: the people compelled to press the “Report Inappropriate” button on the images of a young girl unashamed of her body but allow others to do exactly what she’s doing.
Why is it that the anonymously naked photos of women sent into the @Collegefession Twitter account yield no complaints? Why do people celebrate “Titty Tuesday,” “Thong Thursday” and “Sexy Saturday” willingly giving the images hundreds of retweets and thousands of favorites?
For anyone sitting there defending the Instagram Fit accounts because they promote health and well-being, I would like to point out that there is nothing healthier than a woman who is proud of her body and has enough self-esteem to show it. The girls sending nudes into @Collegefession lack many of those empowering qualities.
Newman asked NBC, “How confident can you be if you keep censoring yourself because people don’t want to look at you?” She said she’ll make a difference whether Instagram cooperates or not.
You go, girl.
