A beauty therapist offering post-mastectomy medical areola tattooing has found adverts promoting her services banned by Facebook for breaking ‘sexual content and nudity’ violations. Intended to help cancer survivors ‘feel confident again’ Facebook has come under fire for not allowing advertising of her service, but have doubled down to defend their policy.
Vicky Morgan, a Cornwall-based beautician with 18-years’ experience, has trained to draw tattoos for women and men who have lost their breasts due to mastectomy in order to diversity her services to support cancer survivors.
Her service involves tattooing areola on a woman's reconstructed breasts if they have had surgery or, in the case of women without reconstructed breasts and men, on to flat skin. Posting about medical areola tattooing, The Attic Tanning & Beauty salon shared a drawing of a reconstructed breast with areola tattoos. While these were not removed by Facebook, when the salon tried to promote the service with paid-for ads, they were rejected by the social media platform.
‘I understand the need for them to be strict when it comes to adverts which may cause offence but feel there should be provisions in place when it comes to posts made to help people by offering services that are in the paramedical field, like mine,’ Morgan told the BBC. ‘This is for breast cancer survivors who may need my services to help them claim back their confidence and make them feel like themselves again post-mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery.’
The women having this done have been through enough.
And Morgan has a lot of supporters. 'This is so sad they keep doing this to you,' one of the salon's followers commented. 'This means so much to a lot of women. It's not pornography its [for] mental wellbeing. The women having this done have been through enough. Come on Facebook wake up and stop deleting the post.'
Despite many online that share this opinion, Facebook has defended their decision.
'We allow people to post images of post-mastectomy areola tattoos on their page or profile, as Vicky has been able to in this case,' a spokesperson for Facebook told Grazia. 'However, we do not allow people to run ads which include adult content, including nudity or implied nudity, because ads are governed by a stricter set of policies. This is why the ads Vicky tried to publish were not allowed on the platform. We recognise the important work Vicky is doing and hope she continues to use the platform to promote this.'
Anger around policies like this on Facebook – who owns Instagram – have been growing for some time. The #FreeTheNipple campaign has seen countless celebrities and social media users alike lobby social media platforms to treat men and women’s nipples equally. Facebook’s current adult nudity and sexual activity guidelines forbid anyone from posting ‘Uncovered female nipples except in the context of breastfeeding, birth giving and after-birth moments, health-related situations (for example, post-mastectomy, breast cancer awareness or gender confirmation surgery) or an act of protest.’
Yes, the policy does specify ‘female nipples’. Because hey, women are just sex objects, remember!
While Morgan’s drawings are a depiction of post-mastectomy, the rules above apply to regular posts on the platform, not advertisements. In their advertising policy, Facebook states ‘Ads must not contain adult content. This includes nudity, depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions, or activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.’
So why the discrepancy between posting pictures and posting advertisements? Well, since paid for posts are 'boosted' to be promoted to a wider audience than just those on your profile, it seems they're held to a different standard. But whether or not an advert like Morgan's reaches just her followers or thousands more, it shouldn't matter that an image of a nipple was included in it in this way.
Perhaps, as Facebook have made their nudity policy around regular posting more nuanced over time, they should take a look at their advertising one too.
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