Naomi Campbell’s topless photo removed from Instagram
Iconic supermodel Naomi Campbell‘s efforts to break the glass ceiling of ridiculous rules about nudity on social media was met with failure.
Last Tuesday, the 45-year-old supermodel uploaded a black and white topless image of herself to promote her upcoming book with Taschen’s two-volume book of nude portraits from photographer Paolo Riversi (which were also previewed in Garage Magazine’s latest issue). Accompanied by the hashtag #freethenipple she posted the photograph shot by Mert and Marcus to both twitter and Instagram but it was taken down on Instagram by late Wednesday afternoon while it continues stays on twitter.
Reaction to Campbell’s post has been overwhelmingly positive, and for a time it also became a trending story on Facebook. According to Instagram’s user guidelines, users cannot post “nude, partially nude… pornographic or sexually suggestive photos or content via the service”. However it it allows “photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding Under Instagram’s terms of use. On the other hand Twitter’s terms allow for “graphic content” in tweeted images, but bans their use in other places like an avatar.
The #FreeTheNipple campaign is part of a larger gender equality movement. The campaign reached peak news interest in 2014, when Elle magazine coined the “The Year of the Nipple” after Lina Esco and Rumer Willis, Scout Willis, Miley Cyrus, Chelsea Handler, and Rihanna shared topless images on Instagram and Twitter using the hashtag but ended up having their images removed by the photo blogging platform.
