Does This Photo Offend You? Instagram Thought It Would
When you look at this photo, what are you thinking? Me? Well I’m laughing at how toddlers discover themselves. My own daughter who’s now 3 has done the exact same thing: hiked up her top (she refuses to wear dresses) and stared at her bare tummy as if she had never seen such a sight before. Back to the innocent, funny photo above. Would you believe that there are people out there who found this photo “inappropriate”? She writes a blog for the online boutique Babyccino Kids and recently posted how devastated she was to find her account was disabled. After realizing the picture of her 18-month-old daughter Marlow had been removed, the 33-year-old re-posted the image, thinking there must have been some kind of mistake. Never for a moment had she assumed that it was that picture that had “violated” any rules. Then, hours later, she discovered her account had been disabled. Alongside the photo, Adamo has described how her daughter was wearing her “big girl undies,” as she wanted to be potty trained. Adamo was left in tears when she realized what had happened to her account, writing: “Instagram has deleted four years of my family photos and memories: all the photos of our travels, my children’s birthdays, all my notes and comments about my children’s traits and milestones … all of it gone. I am sick just thinking about it.”
Her story was quickly shared across the Internet and the hashtags #BringBackCourtneyBabyccino and #savethebelly sprung up rapidly with calls for her account to be reinstated. Thankfully, it worked. A spokesman for Instagram said: “We try hard to find a good balance between allowing people to express themselves creatively and having policies in place to protect young children. This is one reason why our guidelines put limitations on nudity, but we recognize that we don’t always get it right. In this case, we made a mistake and have since restored the account.”
I’m delighted for Adamo that the decision was reversed, but it bothers me that this picture was deemed inappropriate to begin with. Has the world gone mad? Age 3, she is fearless and loved jumping into my arms and splashing around. We were immediately scolded by the lifeguard and told we couldn’t film under any circumstances — not even take one picture of our OWN child. Just as the above photo being deemed inappropriate does, too. How many innocent photos were taken of us as kids playing with foam bubbles in the bath? I have a photo of my son, aged 2, naked save for a pirate hat, his hands on his hips. Sure, I never posted it to Facebook or put it on my personal blog because visitors may not be looking at it with the same spirit in which it was intended. But it makes me wonder have we gone too far the other way? If a child, clothed, staring at her rotund belly and flowery pants is deemed inappropriate, then what next? Instagram admitted their mistake this time, but if the twitter support hadn’t been there, what then? Maybe Adamo should be more reserved. Maybe I am wrong. Tell me, do YOU find it inappropriate?
