Facebook apparently used its no-pornography policy to justify removing a photo from a woman’s page [1]– of her breastfeeding her infant daughter. She crossed the line, according to the Facebook spokesperson, for allowing the tiniest peek of her areola to show next to the baby’s mouth.
According to the spokesperson, they don’t go trolling through people’s photos looking for this sort of thing – that would be quite the job, wouldn’t it? Who’s on nipple-patrol this week?? – but if someone lodges a complaint, they act upon it right away. They allow photos of women breastfeeding, as long as the significant parts of the breast don’t show.
OK. I get the fact that lines have to be drawn somewhere. I appreciate that Facebook has a no-pornography rule – my daughter just started her own Facebook page, and I sure as heck don’t want her running into naked pictures of her friends, teachers, or anyone else, for that matter.
But as long as a breast has a suckling infant attached to it, who cares which parts show? Are young boys truly titillated – pun only slightly intended – by this? Or old boys? Or girls of any age? Intrigued, I get. Fascinated, curious. Fine. Good for them – so normal.
Due to the current level of puberty hormones in my own home, I may be hyper-aware of the cultural obsession with breasts. And I’d really like to see them put into a more realistic perspective.
As one of the women in the article points out, people who use Facebook would be hard-pressed to duplicate their large collection of connections on a smaller social network with looser rules. Which means that Facebook is not at risk of losing its audience to an areola or two.
Which also means that Facebook could, if it so chose, be on the cutting edge of establishing a more reasonable norm, shall we say, for human breasts. Allowing them to be seen doing what they exist to do, in natural context, might help us get over being shocked at seeing a mother nursing her infant. It might help us remember that this particular body part is there for reasons well beyond impressing males.
Maybe more girls would learn that boys who are attracted only to their body parts aren’t really good mates after all, because those body parts aren’t there solely for said boy’s enjoyment. Maybe more women, especially those with less education, would begin to see nursing as normal and healthy, instead of something only granola moms do. Trust me, that is still the view of an awfully lot of young, uneducated single moms, who could use all the help they can get to nurture and feed their babies.
But no, Facebook is still being reactionary and provincial, as if tiny bikinis are somehow less “sexy” than nursing a baby.
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