Recently I came across a story about a young woman
named Rupi Kaur, who is a college student in Toronto, Canada. She is an artist
who was working on a photograph series focusing on women's menstruation for one
of her classes. On Instagram she posted one of the photos from her series, the
subject matter: a fully clothed woman, laying on her side facing away from the
camera, with a blood stain on her both the back of her sweatpants and the
sheets of her bed. Apparently Instagram deleted this photo off their sit
because it "violated community guidelines". Kaur posted the photo again,
only to have it deleted the next day for the same exact reason. She then
proceeded to write and post an open letter to Instagram:
"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 repost it again. i will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of
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 who are underage) are objectified. pornified. and treated less
than human. thank you."
I think that this is such an important topic to talk
about. Kaur makes an excellent point how Instagram allows so many inappropriate
photos of women who are being viewed as, and feeding society’s role for them to
be nothing more than sexual objects. I think society needs to stop rejecting
and tip-toeing around the beauty of the human body and the part of being a
woman that we cannot change. I don’t understand why as a society we reject what
defines us, and we are so taken aback by this natural bodily process, but we
are not taken aback by the media and pop-culture filled with violence,
unobtainable body images, the sexualization and objectification of women, and
pornography. As a society we need to start embracing what makes us human and
not using it to degrade one another. For example, just because women have
breasts does not make us objects, and does not give us the right to be treated
as less than. Just because Kaur posted a picture of a woman embracing her
monthly gift does not give social media the right to shun her.
Zhang, Michael. "Instagram Censors Photo of Fully
Clothed Woman on Period, Causes Uproar." PetaPixel RSS. 28 Mar. 2015. Web.
7 Nov. 2015.
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