By Jacqui Cheng | Published: December 29, 2008 - 07:45PM CT
If there's any one thing that social networks consistently facilitate, it's Internet drama. This time, the social network in question is Facebook, and the Internet drama involves boobies. Nursing boobies. Moderators at Facebook made the grave mistake of upsetting a handful of new mothers by removing images of breastfeeding babies from the site, sparking outrage across the Internet and even an in-person protest.
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The hubbub got started when Facebook user Heather Farley uploaded photos in late October of herself breastfeeding her child. The photos were removed not long thereafter, with Farley receiving a warning from the site that her account could be closed if she did not remove another photo that she had uploaded. Irritated at the site's apparent no-breastfeeding policy, Farley joined a Facebook group called "Hey Facebook breastfeeding is not obscene" and eventually organized a protest that occurred over the weekend in front of Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters.
"I don't want future moms to feel that breast-feeding is shameful," Farley told the San Jose Mercury News. "It might keep them from breast-feeding."
The protest was organized in conjunction with the Mothers International Lactation Campaign, a group that fights for mothers' rights to breastfeed in public, among other things. At the protest on Saturday, the group apparently sang songs and breastfed their children while marching outside of Facebook's headquarters. According to the Mercury News, the protest didn't exactly draw crowds, but the message got out to at least a few passers-by.
As per site policy, Facebook does not allow images depicting female nipples or areolas anywhere on the social network, though this does not include breastfeeding photos. Facebook does, however, remove photos that are reported by users as obscene, which is apparently what happened in Farley's (and other mothers') cases. Farley says that the baby covered the nipple and areola in her photos, but that apparently didn't stop other members from reporting the pictures to Facebook.
Of course, there are multiple views on this topic, with some arguing that Facebook is merely doing mothers a favor by protecting them from online predators. After all, someone could see a photo of a child breastfeeding and do... something. Others argue back, saying that Facebook allows far more outrageous photos to stay on the site, such as those hosted by numerous Facebook groups about young girls and women flashing, binge drinking, and everything in between and beyond.
Either way, we hope that the dispute over breastfeeding on Facebook gets nipped in the bud before more photos get unfairly cleaved from the site.
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www.wisewomanresource.com
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