Models' Pubic Hair Triggers Instagram Brouhaha

But site 'OK with man pubes,' photographer says
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 21, 2015 6:30 AM CST
Updated Jan 25, 2015 11:03 AM CST
Instagram Bans Account for Showing Models' Pubes
Instagram's short and curly logo.   (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Is Instagram Pubic Enemy No. 1? The photo-sharing site has been heavily criticized for deleting the account of Australian styling agency and online magazine Sticks and Stones, apparently over the pubic hair visible in this photo, reports the Daily Dot. Agency co-founder Ainsley Hutchence describes the photo of two sisters in swimsuits as one of the most natural she has ever posted and says a male equivalent would never have been censored. "Unfortunately, Instagram has ruled out natural hair that appears on all bodies of women that don't trim their bikini lines," she tells Mic. "This hair occasionally does spill out of the sides of swimwear as it does on men in their underwear. But Instagram seem to be OK with man pubes."

"Clearly this is absolutely sexist. Instagram believes that women should wax or get off their platform," says Hutchence, whose account had more than 100,000 followers. She tells C-Heads that the cause for the deletion may also have been a nipple showing in the shadow of a bikini top, but she says she has "heard about many other accounts being deleted for the bush." At Styleite, Hannah Ongley accuses Instagram of "trying to determine what female bodies should look like," saying censorship of natural images results in the female body being viewed as inherently sexual because of images that are "edited, homogenized, and sold back to us with a big side of sex." She notes that with a Justin Bieber ad made specifically for Instagram, pubic hair was actually Photoshopped in. (More Instagram stories.)

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