We’re Asking What Is Wrong With Instagram As It Bans Curvy

Just what is it with Instagram and its apparent problem with women and their pesky bodies? The site famously banned Rihanna for her OTT account, and nipples, unless they’re attached to manly torsos, are off limits, which sparked the #FreeTheNipple backlash as women, rightly annoyed that a part of their anatomy was being policed, fought back by showing more of it.

More recently, ladies who aren’t shy about baring all, have taken to Photoshopping male nipples over their own, partly as a protest, but also to underline just how silly Instagram’s policy actually is. They’re just nips, lads. It’s not actually the fault of the women who have ’em that your policy is skewed by institutionalised sexism.

Institutionalised sexism berates women for breastfeeding their children in public, but applauds them when they show about as much breast in a tight-fitting dress or bikini.

FYI, that’s the same sexism that berates women for breastfeeding their children in public, but applauds them when they show about as much breast in a tight-fitting dress or bikini. When you look at it like that, it makes zero sense, doesn’t it?

It’s double standards at their finest, and IG’s doubled back on itself once again by removing the word ‘curvy’ from its search list. Add it in and it doesn’t appear in the results. How puzzling! Oh, sure, you’ll get a search return for #CurvyGirl, #CurvyInspo and any other number of similar results, but no actual ‘curvy’, a term many women have been using on their #EffYourBeautyStandards pix to promote body positivity.

So, why has Instagram done this? A spokesperson told Buzzfeed that, “‘curvy’ is no longer searchable because “it was being used to share images and videos that violated Instagram’s community guidelines around nudity.” Oh right so, female nudity, no doubt. To be balanced, the site did ban the searchability of the aubergine emoji recently, as it was a common way to find dick picks. You can still use your favourite rude veg; you just won’t find anything thanks to it.

But what IG hasn’t addressed, and which is the really big elephant in the room, is the level of abuse, concern trolling and vile comment that women get who do post their pictures on the platform, using tags like curvy. They’re not fun, as bigger, bodi-posi models like Tess Holliday (above) have found out to their personal chagrin.

And while Insta might think it’s onto a winner banning curvy, as Digital Spy points out, it actually hasn’t looked at the other half of the coin. “On the opposite side of the scale, ‘thin’ and ‘skinny’ offer content advisory notices on eating disorders,” it says, adding, “despite all these controls, terms such as ‘fatf**k’, ‘fatpig’ and ‘lardass’ still exist.”

Oh. Right. Looks like they’ve got some work to do yet…

• curvy
• Instagram
• social media
• StopTheShame