Campaign launches to allow nipple tattooing images on social media
A new campaign has launched, challenging Facebook and Instagram over their policies around banning accounts that share images of nipple reconstructions.
The World Medical Artists campaign is targeting Facebook, which owns the social media sites Facebook and Instagram.
Kelly Forshaw Smith, medical micropigmentation artist and head medical micropigmentation trainer at Finishing Touches Group, specialises in nipple and areola reconstruction through tattooing, and has treated over 8,000 women and men, many of them following breast surgery due to cancer.
She says that she and many of her peers have been banned from Facebook and Instagram countless times for posting images of their work because the pictures go against the sites’ community guidelines under the category of “sexual content and nudity”.
On September 1, Forshaw Smith and fellow micropigmentation artists will take to Facebook HQ in London dressed in inflatable breast costumes in attempt to persuade the company to make a change to its rules that would help empower breast cancer survivors to know that nipple and areola restoration treatments are available.
Forshaw commented: “I disagree with Facebook’s banning of the images as it does say that posts about breast cancer are allowed but they instantly get taken down as they are mistaken for sexual content. I feel it is difficult for individuals in this business, especially my students who are new to the industry.
"To some patients, the treatment signifies the end of their breast cancer journey. Facebook and Instagram are limiting the awareness of the service available to post breast cancer patients”.
Anyone interested in joining the campaign or finding out more, can check out the group's website here.
