They deleted her instagram account after she posted this photo.

After one of the following photos was posted, Instagram banned the user’s account. Can you guess which one?

This one:

Or this one:

Or this one:

Or this one:

All just photos of girls in bikinis, right?

Right. All except the last one, which shows HIDEOUS FEMALE PUBIC HAIR ARRRRRRGGGHHHH EEEWWWWW.

Yeah. It was the last photo that appeared to get Artist Petra Collins banned. Apparently she received so many complaints, that not only did Instagram delete the photo, they shut down her entire account.

And the only difference between that photo and the other 5.9 million other photos hashtagged ‘bikini’ on Instagram?

Pubes.

Well, female pubes, to be exact. It’s important to note that Instagram doesn’t seem to have a problem with male pubic hair. Of the 17, 829 Instagram photos hashtagged ‘pubes’, almost all are of males (except for the jokey ‘haha my cat’s hair looks like #pubes!’ sort of shots). One of the most popular photos on Instagram last week was this photo of One Direction’s Liam on his hotel balcony:

So what is the freaking deal, Instagram? Why has the line of ‘offensiveness’ seemingly been drawn at women’s bikini lines in their natural state? If you’re going to have guidelines for what’s appropriate – fine. But how can those guidelines be so filled with hyprocricy? How can you allow barely-there bikini shots but only if they’re hairless? How can you allow men’s pubic hair but not women’s? What sort of alternate universe is this?

Why does the person in charge of censorship at Instagram seem to hate female pubic hair so much?

Petra Collins, the artist whose account was deleted, had this to say about the whole ordeal on her Facebook page:

Recently, I had my Instagram account deleted. I did nothing that violated the terms of use. No nudity, violence, pornography, unlawful, hateful or infringing imagery. What I did have was an image of MY body that didn’t meet society’s standard of “femininity.” The image I posted was from the waist down wearing a bathing suit bottom in front of a sparkly backdrop.

Unlike the 5,883,628 (this is how many images are tagged #bikini) bathing suit images on Instagram, mine depicted my own unaltered state — an unshaven bikini line. Up until this moment, I had obviously seen and felt the pressure to regulate my body, but never thought I would literally experience it.

She finished with this:

To those who reported me, to those who are disgusted by my body… I want you to thoughtfully dissect your own reaction to these things. Please think about WHY you felt this way, WHY this image was so shocking, WHY you have no tolerance for it. To all the young girls and women, do not let this discourage you, do not let anyone tell you what you should look like, tell you how to be, tell you that you do not own your body.

Exactly. WHY? Have we been so conditioned to think female pubic hair is the epitome of all that is hideous that we can’t even handle a few strays sitting – GASP! – outside a bikini line?

Is female pubic hair really one of the most offensive things that could be posted on Instagram?

Update: Instagram got in touch with me this afternoon to ‘provide background’ on this story. They wanted me to make it clear that Petra Collins had posted photos of nude people in the past, and this is why her account was deleted.

It’s interesting to note however (especially given she had over 25,000 followers looking at her photos every day), that her account wasn’t actually deleted until after she posted the pubes photo. I was given this comment to share with you all:

“Instagram has a clear set of community guidelines which make it clear what is and isn’t allowed. This includes photos or videos of actual nude people. We encourage people who come across content that makes them uncomfortable to report it to us using the built-in reporting tools next to every photo or video on Instagram.”

So there you go.

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