A selfie removed from her Instagram profile sent Madonna on a rampage. In the pop star’s crosshairs, this time, he ended up with Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook and Instagram, because Instagram dared to delete a photo he posted in which she can be seen lying on a bed, posing sexy, fishnet stockings and in black lingerie, and with a nipple in full view. Precisely this detail was worth the removal of the photo by the social network. So the famous 63-year-old immediately republished the shots (but covering the nipple with a little heart) and talking about censorship.
The decision
For Instagram, the photo violated the rules against nudity and was therefore removed. “When there is, we eliminate content that goes against the rules, regardless of who publishes it,” a spokesperson for Meta told CNN. Madonna’s response goes straight: “I’m reposting the photos that Instagram removed without notice or notification,” she wrote. “The reason they gave is that a small portion of my nipple has been exposed. It is still amazing to me that we live in a culture that allows you to show every other inch of a woman’s body except a nipple … The same nipple that feeds babies. ‘
Finally, Madonna claimed to have maintained her “sanity through four decades of censorship, sexism, age-based discrimination and misogyny.” A passage that seems to be the answer to the many who have seen in this latest super sexy twist (for some years her character has become Madame X, the secret agent “who travels the world changing identity, fighting for freedom and bringing light into darker places “) as a moment of lack of mental clarity of the pop star, which would also be reflected in the abuse of botox, invasive to the point of having distorted her own features.
Still according to the rules of social media, “the expression of nudity or sexual activity is prohibited or limited because some people may be sensitive to this type of content”. However, in recent years the rules have become more lax when it comes to posts showing a woman’s nipples while breastfeeding, for example. It is no coincidence that a few months ago, Instagram apologized to Pedro Almodóvar for having censored the poster of his film “Parallel mothers “, with Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit, in which there was a shot on a nipple with a drop of milk.
The battle has been going on for years to freely show women’s nipples and treat them the same way as men’s. In 2012, the #Freethenipple campaign (for nipple release) was launched with the aim of challenging the general convention that allows men to show themselves shirtless in public while the same behavior is considered indecent or sexual for women. The campaign is supported by celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Scout Willis and Cara Delevingne, among others.