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| Friends post-protest outside school (2010) |
Thinking about politics and issues that I care about is difficult. In today's society, I feel like there are too many issues to even begin to think about and given the environment I've grown up and matured in, there's a constant voice in the back of my mind questioning everything. That being said, whenever it came to political debates in school, I never really raised any matters myself. I didn't tend to contribute to conversations and preferred to sit and listen as closest friends talked for hours over matters such as education fees, child benefit and feminism. Perhaps it was my somewhat introverted nature that caused me to keep quiet since I've always preferred to voice opinions in a subtle manner. The school I grew up in was a nurturing ground for girls to constantly question problems in society. Everyone was intelligent and capable from a young age and so it made sense that when I was Year 9 and at the tender age of 13, it was the norm to participate in annual 'debating days' with the top all-boys state school in North London. My topic to talk about and debate over on one such occasion was something to do with the government and although I can't recall exactly what it was, I know the words 'cabinet', 'minister' and 'exchequer' were in the brief. I was thirteen years old and didn't have a clue on what was being asked of me. Simply put, whilst I've always been surrounded by talks of political and social issues, I've never voiced my own opinions- partially through the realisation that I will probably never be able to deliver my thoughts as eloquently as my secondary school classmates and peers. I've only taken in information given to me and made my own opinions, never really solidifying them by arguing and speaking out.
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| A friend protesting for No More Page Three campaign (2014) |
When deciding what to do for this project, I figured I wanted to do something on feminism but the issues and problems surrounding misogyny and gender inequality is too great to even think about tackling in just one 3 week project. To me, it doesn't feel like I'll have enough time to really find out what it is that I want to say. The feminist debate is such a vast topic (as are almost all social issues) and the list of things wrong with gender inequality range from belittling women in the workplace, unreasonable beauty ideals etc. The list goes on. On top of this, opinions constantly change and every piece of information that I read and digest contributes to the ever-growing answer to 'what are your thoughts on so and so?' and thus to not confuse myself in an internal argument over what is right and what is wrong, I decided to start small. Really small, in fact. I'm talking about nipples.
The hashtag #freethenipple has been cropping up on social media and it's one version of the public's outcry to Instagram. On the social media app, you are not allowed to post photos (even if they aren't sexually explicit) of your nipples. That's for females, that is. If you're posting male nipples, feel free to clog up the feed with photos of your topless chest. Whilst some people agree with Instagram's ruling to ban photos of female nipples through the reasoning that everything must be 'appropriate for teens and also for adults', there are some thoughts to be considered. Children and teenagers can play violent video games that see characters massacred and hacked to death. They can see videos of public beheadings on Facebook. And yet we don't allow them to see something that is completely natural and harmless? We're censoring a nipple, something that (if we're really going to go into this) provides milk to babies and therefore provides life rather than taking it away. We're essentially shaming women's bodies for being the way they are. Kids should get to see gruesome and bloody murders but not a nipple? Apparently so- because nipples are far too explicit.
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