Written by Amy Beecham

After a nude photo posted by Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee was allowed to remain on Instagram for hours, many of us are wondering why it seems like only women’s bodies get censored on the app?

It’s not uncommon for a celebrity Instagram post to break the internet. Whether it’s a relationship hard launch, ‘surprise’ marriage, baby announcement or even just a fire selfie, we’re used to content from the social media site dictating our IRL conversations. However, the discussions many people were having yesterday were markedly different and concerned a (now deleted) post shared by Mötley Crüe drummer and ex-husband of Pamela Anderson Tommy Lee, in which he was completely naked with his penis fully exposed.

On a site where users have reported that even outlines of their breasts or nipples have been taken down for violating community guidelines, many users were outraged that the picture remained for at least five hours, at which point it’s unclear whether Lee deleted the picture himself or it was removed.

“I would fucking love to know why a full frontal nude picture of Tommy Lee and his clearly visible penis is allowed to stay on Instagram for five hours when the female body even with nipples covered is consistently censored with threats to delete the account,” campaigner Gina Martin wrote in her own Instagram post.

Martin’s campaign to make upskirting illegal resulted in the Voyeurism (Offences) Act 2019, and in 2020, alongside Black plus-size model Nyome Nicholas Williams and photographer Alex Cameron, Martin protested against Instagram’s nudity policy, which previously censored the bodies of larger Black women.

According to its current community guidelines, Instagram says that it doesn’t allow nudity: “This includes photos, videos, and some digitally created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks.”

“It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos 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 are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK too,” it continues.

However, as many user anecdotes and Lee’s picture proves, this isn’t always fairly enforced. “I got a warning from TikTok once for not wearing a bra under my top lols,” @sharongaffka shared with Martin in the comments.

“I’ve seen a photo of a mammogram, shared by someone who was at the time receiving treatment for breast cancer, removed,” added @random_hats_of_kindness.

“*AFAB bodies – nonbinary, gender diverse & trans folks bodies (particularly top surgery pics/videos) also get censored by IG,” highlighted @s3xtheorywithdemi.

“I was well aware of the gender bias in the algorithm before, but this took it to another level,” Eliza Hatch, creator of @cheerupluv tells Stylist.

Hatch says that it’s “astonishing” that pictures of a completely visible penis are allowed to stay on-site when her posts sharing a survivor’s testimony of sexual harassment or DMs including verbal abuse or unsolicited images that she’s received get “removed by Instagram immediately”.

“Photos of breastfeeding mothers with even the slightest sliver of areola showing are removed instantaneously. Images of Black curvy bodies are constantly shadow-banned or taken down. Testimonies of sexual harassment and abuse are suppressed and censored, and sex-positive pages are warned that their accounts are going to be deleted all the time. But the full-frontal penis of a verified straight white man with over 1 million followers? Yep, totally fine. No community guidelines breached there. And do you know why? Because they were written by the very same men.”

Indeed, Lee is not the first male celebrity to share nude photographs to the app; nor will he be the last, but the blatant double standards when it comes to women’s and trans bodies is something that desperately needs to be addressed.

As Martin herself highlighted, the problem is not that Tommy Lee wants to post a nude photo, but instead “the blatant gender double standard that sees [how] the algorithm and people working in reports view feminine bodies, especially Black, plus-sized and disabled people’s bodies and skin as inappropriate whether they are portrayed sexually or not, but has no issue with this.”

Instagram – and its parent company Meta – owe it to its 1 billion monthly users to continue deplatforming hateful, dangerous and inappropriate images shared on the app. But the question remains – why are women’s bodies so quick to be censored?

Stylist has approached Instagram for comment.

Images: Getty

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