Introduction
Throughout the rise of social media, censorship has become one of the biggest issues on social media especially the censorship of plus-size bodies. Plus-size bodies have been censored on social media platforms for decades, with society making individuals consider plus-size bodies being inappropriate or plus size individuals are promoting an unhealthy lifestyle to people on social media. The definition of media censorship is considered to be ‘The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.’(Oxford Languages). Censorship on social media platforms can be considered one of the most 21st-century forms of social Injustice, as minorities or marginalised individuals are not having the same opportunities as other creators. Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms in the world with up to 1.21 billion people actively using the app monthly (Statista 2022). With Instagram being one of the most used social media apps it as to have community guidelines and rules for users to follow, but sometimes these moderators can be a bit extreme especially to plus size women or marginalised communities creating a community that can be negative and bias towards people that aren’t standardized people of society.
Methodology
It is the reality for the majority of plus size women on social media to be censored, this has been an issue since the creation of social media. This report will be discussing the evidence to show that censorship of plus size women happens, the damages that can happen from it and lastly how we can fix it. This issue is not just a one-person or one place sort of problem this is happening to millions of people all around the world. Social media, specifically Instagram is a platform for people to express themselves through images, stories and reels, of course, Instagram has to have censorship on specific things but when one’s person is posting a specific thing and is applauded or has positive feedback and another that posts something similar and is it hit with backlash and hate then that’s when it becomes an issue especially when it keeps happening. I will be focusing more on the social media platform Instagram for this report and how they are stopping plus size creators from posting content.
Results
It is a reality for the majority of plus size women on social media to receive negative comments or receiving notifications that their posts have been taken down from the social media platform. If these women are lucky for their posts not to be taken down their comments are flooded with strangers commenting hurtful and demeaning things about their size and bodies. This can lead to a lot of body issues and just feeling like you are different and the perfect body is not yours, especially when you don’t see the proper representation of real women that are not a size 0, this can hurt and damage self-esteem and the way plus size women look at themselves. According to Chatelaine (2018), a model by the name of Katana Fatale posted a photo of herself in an outdoor shower, and within hours Instagram removed the photo. With this action taken by Instagram Katana decided to fight back with a side-by-side photo of her and Kim Kardashian that was ‘even more revealing’ than hers, so Katana decided to upload the side-by-side photo to her Instagram story to let her followers know what has happened. Katana’s story caught the eye of Sarah Hosteler Rosen and Lou Xavier, two women from Portland that have been seeing an alarming pattern in the world of social media when it comes to plus-size bodies.
Research done by Witt, Suzor and Huggins (2019) looked at the evaluation of the moderation of women’s bodies on Instagram as they wanted to see if Instagram was favouring somebody types over others and just the general moderation of women’s bodies in general. This source looked at 4944 images of women on social media and the researchers found an inconsistent trend of moderation they found that 22 per cent of images that were taken down were not in violation of community guidelines and are well within the rules of Instagram.
Back in 2020, The Guardian and Engadget wrote a story about how a well known plus-size model named Nyome Nicholas-Williams forced Instagram to change the nudity policy. In August of 2020 Instagram was accused of censoring the plus-size model and other plus size and or black creators as they also came forward, they discussed the discriminating nature of the censoring as they are deleting their content over white users that have done the same. Nicholas-Williams stated that ‘a fat black woman celebrating her body is banned … I want to promote self-love and inclusivity because that’s how I feel and how I want other women like me to feel”. Since the plus-size model came out with her accusations more creators followed sharing their stories with their followers about the discrimination of Instagram’s censorship rules. This was back in 2020 even though it was some change to end the inequality of plus size women social media platforms still have a long way to go to make their platforms equal to use forever creator and user.
Censorship on Instagram
Instagram, of course, needs to have content moderation and rules but with Instagram using a mix of artificial intelligence (AI) and human reviewers, it can be confusing. With plus size women being targeted by these rules Instagram needs to look at the program and rules they have set there AI and review them, to make content sharing on the app more equal. Instagram also has 15,000 content reviewers across the globe, these individuals go through thousands of photos a day that seemed to violate the rules (The Guardian 2020). The problem with human content moderators is that they can be biased whether or not they know if they are being biased, whether it is personal or political, humans are unconsciously biased towards things they like or don’t like or what lines with that’s individuals’ views, morals or beliefs. There will never be an unbiased human even though sometimes we think we are, so to tackle this problem I suggest that social media platforms specifically Instagram redesigns the algorithm and looks at their Artificial Intelligence and recodes or redesign them in a way that content can be looked at equally.
Discussion
From the sources I have used in this report it is evident that there is a censorship issue with plus size women on Instagram. Even though things have changed over the last couple of years such as the nudity policy and more freedom available for plus size women. Censorship happens so much more than you think especially with big creators with followings but it can also happen to an everyday mundane individual. Plus size individuals just want to create content equally and be able to express themselves freely without any repercussions of self-expression especially when it comes to freely expressing their bodies. Being censored as a plus-size woman can lead to body image issues which can lead to more serious problems later for that individual as being censored due to your body can make you feel like you’re not enough (McComb & Mills 2021). Social media platforms are about freely expressing yourself but when you get censored from showing something creative or receiving negative comments it can diminish anybody.
Conclusion
Censorship leads to a multitude of problems for the individuals, plus size women deserve to be able to freely express themselves without the fear of being censored just because of their bodies and also marginalised individuals as well-being censored. It’s clear that social media platforms still have a lot of work to do to make things more equal for every user on the platforms. Plus-size bodies deserve to be celebrated not censored.
Reflection
Looking at the process from this visual essay and research looking at censorship of Plus Size women on Instagram was enjoyable as it’s close to my heart and I enjoy talking about things including plus size women, especially injustices. It’s quite an emotional thing to research because it hurts a lot of people and makes them question a lot of things about themselves. From research, there is no other solution to this problem besides being equal to everyone and having unbiased moderators. The biggest issue I had with this assignment was writing the report and writing the right things.
There is always the saying that a picture speaks 1000 words, so for my visual essay, I chose photos that correlated to what I wanted to say without words. I made it aesthetic as Instagram is all about aesthetics and amazing visuals. I also wanted to have Instagram influencers in my visual essay as influencers basically run Instagram and also, they are the ones with the most eyes on them and are most likely to be censored especially plus-size influencers.
References
Bonifacic, I 2020, ‘Instagram changes nudity policy after controversy with Black, plus-size model’, Engadget,< https://www.engadget.com/instagram-nudity-policy-change-204903089.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucHJvcXVlc3QuY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAL0sNOqLa3mOMiLXSLiXgHog59G7EitdOnwCH5XKcnQ0UPXaoAJUITLQuAXzdquP1AIkKP35GTqlNyPpqqxL39YflC0OMQ22EEQnAD7y7IU3LwWfw71ErfxLJz9F_21VvugM2zGxvkRk83fziyGYOIa4xHUSMf8ZtOHxv5GzzJuR
Chatelaine, 2018, ‘Why Women Are Calling Out Instagram for Censoring Photos of Plus Size Bodies’, English ed. Edn, St. Joseph Communications, Toronto.
Google 2022, ‘What is censorship?’, Oxford Languages, Accessed 24 April 2022
Iqbal, N 2020, ‘Instagram row over plus-size model forces change to nudity policy’, The Guardian ,https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/25/instagram-row-over-plus-size-model-forces-change-to-nudity-policy
McComb, S,E & Mills, J,S, 2021, ‘The effect of physical appearance perfectionism and social comparison to thin-, slim-thick-, and fit-ideal Instagram imagery on young women’s body image’, Body Image, vol.40, pp. 165-175.
Statista 2022, ‘Instagram: number of global users 2020-2025’, < https://www.statista.com/statistics/183585/instagram-number-of-global-users/ >
Mia’s life 