From Chelsea Handler’s “Free the Nipple” post, to a body-positive girl’s underwear-clad selfie, Instagram’s community guidelines have been constantly under fire.
Just recently, another photo has joined the fray:
This photo by Rupi Kaur, a Toronto-based poet, was taken down by Instagram twice. Their reason? It was deemed to be in violation of the ‘Community Guidelines’.
With her face to the wall and no other subject within the frame, all attention is on the patches of red on her sheets and between her legs: blood stains. This photo is included in Kaur’s photo series titled “Period” for her visual rhetoric course at the University of Waterloo. But when Instagram took it down, Kaur unleashed her frustrations and didn’t hold back one bit:
“Thank you @instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique. You deleted a photo of a woman who is fully covered and menstruating stating that it goes against community guidelines when your guidelines outline that it is nothing but acceptable. The girl is fully clothed. The photo is mine. It is not attacking a certain group. Nor is it spam. And because it does not break those guidelines I will re-post it.”
“I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of a misogynist society that will have my body in an underwear but not be okay with a small leak when your pages are filled with countless photos/accounts where women (so many of whom are underage) are objectified, pornified, and treated less than human.”
Kaur chose to focus on the topic of menstruation to demistify and destigmatize the female body and all that comes with it, including the monthly cycle.
She wants to use this medium to encourage people to ‘realise these are just regular, normal processes’.
“Some women aren’t allowed in their religious place of worship or out of their homes to do certain things. And are told they are sick. As if the period is a common cold.”
“They want to tell me I should be quiet about this. That all of this we experience collectively does not need to be seen. Just felt secretly behind closed doors. That’s why this is important. Because when I first got my period my mother was sad and worried. And they want to censor all that pain. Experience. Learning. No.”
“Their patriarchy is leaking. Their misogyny is leaking. We will not be censored.”
After challenging Instagram’s removal of her photo, the site eventually conceded and the photo was restored.
All’s well that ends well.