Your Skin, Our Guidelines
guidelines.
It didn’t take long for me to start having problems with the social media platforms I was posting my art on. During the first few months of working on the project, I was struggling immensely with posting and KEEPING my illustrations up on Instagram, because of one specific thing.
Community Guidelines.
Some platforms are more lenient than others, but Instagram is definitely the worst when it comes to the userbase’s creative freedom. For the last two years as I have been posting my art consistently on Instagram, I have had to change things around multiple times, including starting on a whole new account, and changing the design of one specific character whose appearance was causing most of the problems. In fact, the issues became so apparent and systematic that I decided to assign this character a SYMBOL that was based on the visual representation of this censorship. Seeing this notification pop up every time I opened the app angered me so much that I just had to say something, to do something. Because shutting up is not an option for me any longer.
“We do not allow glorification or encouragement of self-injury, including eating disorders. We do allow content that references self-injury and eating disorders if it is for the purpose of creating awareness or signposting support.”
oh no.
That is what the Instagram Community Guidelines say on the topic of self-harm as of December 2024. When you look at it just as it is, it’s a reasonable principle and definitely something we all should abide by. The problem with this rule is not the rule itself, but the way it is enforced by the administration, how severely users of the platform are punished for one accidental violation of the rule, and how disproportionally artists are punished for posting their art under the guise of this specific rule.
Because no, it is not the promotional posts that get taken down – it is the posts that are doing exactly what Instagram says users are allowed to post. That is raising awareness and offering support to others who are struggling with the same shit you are.
But even then, it doesn’t make any sense. Many of my followers have told me that they see actual photographs of real-life self.-harm on Instagram constantly, and those posts never get taken down, no matter how many times they are reported to the admins. But when it comes to art that is depicting self-harm scars on a fictional character, that is not allowed. And I think we all here know what that is usually called in the field of arts.
Artistic censorship kills social and political commentary. Artists have historically been the members of society to protest the loudest and be at the forefront of revolutions. Art has been used as a method of challenging ideologies in power at that moment, as a means to communicate thoughts and feelings otherwise difficult to grasp. There is a reason why illustrators of political satire and caricatures are needed in today’s post-modern world: they portray the opinions of the regular folk, those who do not have a voice, whose voice has been taken away from them by oppressive governments and abusive authorities.
Abusive authorities like educational institutes and the field of health care.
The scars on my skin are not in promotion of self-harm. They just are. They are a part of my body, my story, and me existing in this world – both online and offline – does not mean I am actively promoting self-destructive behavior. By taking away my creative freedom as an artist, these media outlets are suppressing the voice of a victim who has been silenced and censored for their entire life. They are not protecting anyone by claiming that my illustrations are promoting self-harm; they are doing the exact opposite of it.
Because what good has ever come out of artistic censorship? Have we really, honest to god, forgotten all of that already, while it hasn’t even been an entire century?
Frustrated,
ichigonya