At least one Instagram user is complaining that it's apparently OK for someone with a good body to post a picture of themselves scantily clad, but if the body is overweight the site disapproves.
That is the feeling of 19-year of Samm Newman, a Ohio University-Chillicothe student, who recently posted a picture of herself on the social network site wearing her bra and white shorts.
Newman believes the site's decision-makers felt her size-24 figure violated the site's acceptable content policy. She's left wondering why so many other similar images of users dressed scantily are still up on the site.
"I would like an answer myself as to why so many other photos on other accounts are still up," Newman asked. "The problem is Instagram silencing anyone who doesn't fit their agenda."
Newman explained that she suffered in her early teen years from bullying due to her size. Once she began college, the sociology major explained, she was looking forward to changing that negative history.
"When I graduated high school and joined a different crowd in college, I was able to completely come out of my shell," she added.
Instagram issued a statement explaining its side of the controversy, saying, "When our team processes reports from other members of the Instagram community, we occasionally make a mistake. In this case, we wrongly removed an account and worked to rectify the error as soon as we were notified. We apologize for any inconvenience."
While Newman says her account was reinstated by Instagram, she adds that the photo that started the issue has not been restored, nor has a similar one she had posted earlier.
"They gave me my account back, but the photos weren't there," she added. "That was kind of the whole point. The hypocrisy is still there."
In a recent study conducted by Western New England University it was concluded that overweight women endure an average of three fat-shaming moments every day. The study asked 50 overweight and obese women to keep daily diaries for a week and the group reported 1,077 weight-stigmatizing events during the seven-day period.
