Instagram’s zero tolerance policy against nipples has just made another high-profile enemy. Scout Willis, daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, went topless on the streets of New York yesterday, baring her breasts in protest of the photo-sharing application’s banning of the female nipple.
“Legal in NYC but not on @instagram,” Willis wrote, captioning a photo that showed her topless and browsing the produce at a Lower East Side grocery. (New York City is one of the few places in the U.S. where women can walk around naked from the waist up without risking arrest for indecent exposure.)
The original (NSFW) tweets can be seen here and here.
This isn’t the first time Instagram has been called out for its seemingly hypocritical policy when it comes to photos of female breasts. In addition to reportedly suspending Rihanna’s account in April after she posted a photo of her topless cover for Lui magazine (which Instagram cagily described as having happened “by mistake”) the application has come under fire for removing pictures of breast cancer survivors and breastfeeding moms — while simultaneously allowing photos of bare-chested men, or photos posted by leery men of nearly-nude women, to stay up.
Rihanna jumped on the topless bandwagon, supporting Scout on Twitter with the battle cry “FREE THE NIPPLE.”
Instagram shut down Scout’s account, and she later posted the photo-sharing site’s response, informing her that she can reactivate her account if she adheres to their community policy. (So, no nipple photos… for now.)
Will this latest bit of bad publicity finally inspire Instagram to #FreeTheNipple? Only time (and perhaps more topless photos) will tell.
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