Hey Pinterest, what’s up with nudity? Seriously, what’s so inexplicably wrong with one of the most natural state of being? After the hypocrisy of Facebook and Instagram, whose rules on nudity are bigot, sexist and discriminatory against women, now it is Pinterest to be in the limelight for limiting nudity once more.
Whilst you can still have nude images in your boards, images containing bare breasts, nipples or anything nude is now completely censored in the search results. The same decision was taken by Tumblr after being bought by Yahoo!, and costed the blogging platform a huge loss of users.
So, why is Pinterest censoring nudity in its search results?
Nude or Porn?
Googling for art nude images without parental filters opens up a set of search results that have very little to do with art. While this can be an issue for the search engine, Pinterest and nudity has always had a different approach: Pinterest allowed nudity in their boards, but not sexuality or pornography. This should have allowed Pinterest to avoid the censorship that other social media impose on their users. Alas, this is not what happens, Pinterest has still decided that nude is not good in their search results. But do you know what is the implication of this?
What does the disappearing nudes means for Pinterest
You may argue that Pinterest is not censoring nudity, as it is still allowed in single pins; however, how good is to allow nude images if you make it impossible to find them?
Searching for “nude” in Pinterest does not return relevant results, hence the boards that are more likely to contain certain type of images are going to be extremely challenging to be found.
Censoring the nude in search results means that Pinterest is actively discouraging nudity. Full stop.
Shouldn’t be ashamed of your nudity?
What is Pinterest saying with its move in censoring nudity? Isn’t it limiting our artistic view? Isn’t this censorship, this “nipplegate” which is affecting all the major US social media telling us that we should actually be ashamed of our bodies?
Why is a nipple so incredibly dangerous to our well being?
I would not expose my kid to sexuality, but it is our attitude towards a simple nude that creates the sexualisation of nudity. The taboo of a boob that makes it become the object of sexual desire… why don’t we treat it for what it is?
I am not ashamed of my nipples. They are natural. Women should not be ashamed of them for the same reason. Maybe we need some more sexual education in schools, to tell us the difference between nudity and sexuality. In this perspective Pinterest censorship of nudes in their search results is not a healthy move. It is one of the simplest move, but is it making us better? Any of us? Is it making us safer?
I believe you clearly understand my point.
Am I too European?
It is clear that I have a much more liberal approach to nudity than the majority of people. In the past a US editor commented that our photographs were very “European”. It is also clear that the US sees nudity as sexual, whilst in Europe nudity is generally seen as… well simply not having clothes on.
Pinterest seems to have taken a stand on nudity to comply with what their user feels like the right thing to do, I guess our readers feel different, and we are glad about it!