Facebook has updated its Community Standards, and a small snippet of the language may be of interest to breastfeeding moms — especially if they’ve had their pictures removed or accounts shut down.
“We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring,” Facebook says.
Though it remains to be seen whether or not click-happy haters will be able to successfully report and ban images of normal breastfeeding, the official stance is pretty clear: Nurse on, moms.
This may come as a relief to women who have repeatedly been banned for sharing photos of their nursing kids.
Will breastfeeding photos be OK if one nipple is being used to feed a baby and the other is hanging out? That isn’t entirely clear. It definitely leaves room for people to continue to argue whether or not breastfeeding photos are obscene. This is a blessing in disguise. Wouldn’t the internet be a boring place without endless arguments over breastfeeding photos — or brelfies, if you’re so last week.
In all sincerity, it’s a shame Facebook even had to clarify any of this. It has a pretty pathetic reputation when it comes to censoring photos of nursing moms. Hopefully this positive point of view will help normalize breastfeeding. If you’re scratching your head and wondering what exactly is abnormal about breastfeeding in the first place, drop by literally any comment thread discussing women nursing in public or sharing breastfeeding photos. Plenty of people still think it’s shocking, or should only be done under a cover, or needs to be done at home, or ought to be done with a bottle in public, or is just plain ewwwww.
We have a long way to go. At least Facebook is finally on board.
More on breastfeeding
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