Sep 07 2007
Did Facebook make a boob-oo?
I was just reading a story on the SMH site about Facebook removing photographs of women breastfeeding.
I though it very ironic that SMH are displaying an MBF advertisement saying “rollover to lift my shirt”. I seriously thought it was part of the story – until the woman exposed her belly to me.
It’s got the lactivists (that is such a cool term) up in arms, and I daresay it’s not the last we hear of this. Blogger Karen has written about how she is banned from Facebook permanently.
Duncan Riley has more coverage at Techcrunch “Breast isn’t Best on Facebook” and apparently 7,000 protesters have joined the “Hey, Facebook, Breastfeeding is not Obscene” Group.
This reminds me of “The White Milk” controversy from earlier in the year.
What do you think? Are Facebook right or wrong? Where do we draw the line?
11 Responses to “Did Facebook make a boob-oo?”
If it’s ok to show topless women on current affairs show (60 Minutes story on the Moulin Rouge) then why can’t we post pictures of women breastfeeding on the internet?
And why is it such a big deal? Do people feel uncomfortable seeing breasts used for what they are designed for? Instead of sexualising women into nothing more than a body, does seeing them as a form of nourishment for our children offend you in some way? Guess what! Seeing women objectified offends me! But apparently that’s legal. As is breastfeeding in public!
This is the comment I left on Karen’s blog as I feel strongly about the rights of women being able to breastfeed in public.
“Ohh pulease. Why does breastfeeding cause such ire among people? If you don’t like the photos, don’t look at them. Breastfeeding is food to a baby – that is all – pure and simple. I don’t know that I would post a breastfeeding photo on the web, but why can’t a person have that choice if they want? As I said before, don’t look at photos of boobs if they offend you.”
As for Facebook write or wrong? I’ve publicly admitted I’ve got a Facebook account and haven’t really got any value out of it as yet another social networking site. With this type of feedback, and the more I’ve heard about it – read this and this – it collectively doesn’t really endear me to Facebook.
Remember when Kate Langbrook breastfeed her baby on The Panel a few years ago? It caused an outrage as she probably knew it would, but had the courage to do it anyway. I’ll say it again, a woman’s breast milk is her baby’s food.
@ Kin – it seems pretty hypocritical
@ Jen – I agree with you in that I doubt I would post a photo of myself breastfeeding, but I don’t see anything wrong with it. As a society we need to encourage breastfeeding all we can.
Kirstie Marshall was another ridiculous, controversial case
“On 26 February 2003, she was ejected from the Lower House chamber for breastfeeding her 12-day-old baby, Charlotte Louise. A section of the Parliamentary rules, namely Standing Order 30, states: “Unless by order of the House, no Member of this House shall presume to bring any stranger into any part of the House appropriated to the Members of this House while the House, or a Committee of the whole House, is sitting.” As there is no age limit to ‘strangers in the House’ (non-elected persons), only MPs and certain parliamentary staff are allowed in the House during sitting times.”
Facebook is American, and (some noisy) Americans have extremely Puritan views about naked flesh. Americans also, in general, are unable to understand that there are people on the planet with views different from their own.
Personally, I think a society which thinks images of a mother feeding her child are “obscene” has deep, deep problems. But then I’m hardly the first person to say that.
Meg I remember the case, and I remember thinking at the time that it was reasonable. I mean how many women are able to bring your baby to work and breastfeed? In my previous job for example, I would sit in on meetings and take notes and prepare refreshments, supply stationery supplies, organise plans, etc etc. Would I be allowed to do that while breastfeeding? Not likely. She was lucky enough to be able to take her baby to work as it was, something the rest of us will probably never get to do.
@ Stilgherrian – true it’s the farthest thing from obscene. But I wonder if that’s the majority view, or just that of the narrow minded minority (which would include the Facebook admin team)
@ Kin – that’s a fair comment. Also the baby was only days old – aren’t employees mandated to have at least 6 weeks off after the birth?
(Not for the self employed – I had 3 days off with my fourth (caesarean))!
Interesting. For the owner/moderator of the site that’s a really tricky subject!
Some may want to see it, some wont. Some could be offended, some wouldnt etc etc, Does it then allow the posting of material that may be of less worthy intention?
Tricky, tricky tricky!
In Facebooks favor, I guess when they created the site they had to consider many peoples views and draw a line in the sand somewhere to find middleground.
Personally I tend to agree with Stilgherrian’s comments.
Hi,
I think that it is good to remember that not all Americans are wowsers and fools – I know quite a few that find the Facebook breastfeeding ban abhorrent and inconsistent too.
It is kind of funny that Facebook – the rising star of social computing – can still find something to be embarrassed about that the rest of us consider perfectly normal and very healthy
Cheers, Andrew
PS: speaking of unfortunately interposed advertising – there were stories on a certain news website a while back about a fatal shark attack – and the keywords matched it to an advert from a home loan provider warning people about steer clear of “sharks” offering dodgy loans… bit of an outcry at the time, from memory.
Cheers, Andrew
Depending on how Facebook find these images, it’s possible they were picked up in a “flesh-detection” algorithm, commonly used to filter out porn spam by the amount of flesh displayed in the attached images.
Cait
Wow – I didn’t know they used programs like that. You live and learn.