Instagram’s decision to twice remove poet Rupi Kaur’s photo of a menstruating woman caused quite a stir and the story trended quite a lot on social media. Apparently, the photo was taken down by Instagram citing Community Guidelines violation.
Now, Instagram has apologised for “accidentally” removing the photo twice.
Instagram apologised saying, “When our team processes reports from other members of the Instagram community, we occasionally make a mistake. In this case, we wrongly removed content and worked to rectify the error as soon as we were notified. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
Overwhelmed by the support that poured in from all sectors, that made it possible for her voice to be heard, Kaur posted this on Tumblr :
Kaur told Vice that stirring up a controversy was never her intention and she was surprised that it had created such a storm. She wanted to share the work because she was proud of it. She further said that she was moved by the support her followers gave her in calling Instagram out.
Now this might not appear to be a big deal to some. But I want them to consider the fact that this one photo managed to string together women and men, all people who believe in freedom of expression and who believe in the beauty of the natural female body.
Some who pointed out how exposing something so ‘personal’ was inappropriate according to them were consciously or unconsciously, advocating misogyny. They were reminded that ‘ the personal is political’ . And thus there is a need to talk about the personal to drive a change.
