Jun 09
8
Sharon Adams Mastectomy Photos Allowed on Facebook
In a victory for women who are brave enough to share their breast cancer stories, especially to share their soul bearing pictures of the before and afters of a mastectomy, a woman named Sharon Adams has been victorious in a Facebook overturn which ruled her pictures to be too sexual in nature and abusive of their policy against sexually explicit pictures. The problem is, she’s not even showing any of her breasts, she’s covering her in tact breast with her hand, and she’s showing people her breast that has been removed and the massive scar it has left across her chest, in an effort to raise awareness of breast cancer and show women that they have nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to mastectomies and that they should be encouraged by her survivor story.
I think what she did is a terrific thing myself. Having the courage to show such a private photo and telling other women they should not be ashamed of surviving breast cancer by having their breasts or breast removed is really admirable in my book. However, Facebook editors sent her a note that the picture was removed because it violated their guidelines for sexualy explicit photos. When about 900 people online banded together to protest this, Facebook retracted that and state that they understandably took it down in error and that the picture does not violate their guidelines, but unfortunately sometimes pictures that are on the fringe of acceptable may get taken down, and this was one of those times.
I can definitely understand where Facebook was coming from on this. Their editors view thousands of pictures a day that may violate thier code, so I could see how one that seems to be on the cusp could be accidentally eliminated. Sure did cause quite an outcry though! They will I’m sure be more careful about their editing of these types of pictures that are really just educational in nature and not exploitative, which is what I think they’re going for avoiding on their site which is a well respected and highly trafficked social networking site these days.
