Flashmob in Defense of Female Nipples Comes Back to Life on Instagram
At the end of June and beginning of July 2015, Instagram was flooded with a new wave of the #FreeTheNipple flashmob. Lindsey Robertson wrote about flashmob in her column in the online magazine Mashable on July 7th.
Micol Hebron, an artist, feminist and an associate professor at Chapman University (California, USA) launched the flashmob. Guidelines of the social networks like Instagram and Facebook forbid posting photos of women’s naked breasts with nipples showing. The only exemption to the rules are photos featuring breastfeeding and breasts after mastectomy. But, the rules allow photos of the male nipples. One year ago, in June 2014, Hebron posted a photo of a male nipple with a white background and suggested that it be used as a template to cover women’s nipples when posting photos of naked female breasts on social networks. Last week, one year later, a new image that uses Hebron’s idea, appeared online. Very quickly it became “viral” and the flashmob started all over again.
“So here it is with two MALE NIPPLES stickers that I put on to cover my illegal FEMALE NIPPLES!” wrote Aline Nilsson, one of the flashmob participants, in a caption under her photo.
