Are Nipples Really So Offensive?

Sarah Brechon
By Sarah Brechon

Sarah Brechon regularly Blogs and writes articles about the cosmetic surgery and medical aesthetic industries.


If you are a social media user / yummy mummy / avid news follower / a combination of all three, you may have noticed the uproar about Nipples. Perhaps you even joined in the debate.

A Debate About Nipples?

Social Media giants Facebook has long been censoring photographs containing breastfeeding images. This has got many – particularly mums, of course –irked because of the implications of treating a photographed nipple when breastfeeding in the same context as a nipple taken for pornographic purposes.

Most recently, The Guardian ran a campaign to encourage mums to send in their breastfeeding nipple photos which they claimed they would post on the women’s behalf to see if Facebook really would take them down. Somewhat disappointingly, The Guardian never followed through on this but the ensuing thread of comments makes for interesting reading if you want to research the Breastfeeding Photos debate.

How Does This Relate to Cosmetic Surgery?

The angle of this blog, however, is not only nipple photography but body photography in general and the wider issues that are raised by the Facebook breastfeeding situation.

Facebook actually has policies forbidding the public posting of a range of other images of nudity and ‘sexually explicit’ content.

Some of the points which are being raised in the breastfeeding photos debate can equally be applied to Cosmetic Surgery pictures…

why are nipples offensive?

It’s All About Context

There is no denying that certain types of photography censorship are good. On Social Media, all forms of content including images spread very quickly and users cannot easily pick and choose what they are shown in Feeds. Removing offensive sexually explicit images and those of an obscene nature makes sense.

But it all comes down to context.

For a cosmetic surgery company, working hard, being honest and open with patients, videos and photography are fantastic mediums for showing the realities of surgery and potentially achievable results. In this field, a picture really is worth a thousand words and no amount of talking a patient through the procedure or providing information sheets for research is quite the same as actually showing them.

This is not so easy when strict policies would censor images of breasts, nipples and nudity.

Again, we acknowledge that certain images are inappropriate: a vaginoplasty photo, for example, is probably too extreme to accompany a mainstream Blog or Social Media post. In fact, we have tried text-only posts about genital surgery in the past and these were not received well so we learned to keep such topics to the confines of our main site.

Breast Enlargement and Nipple Surgery, however, are two of the most commonly sought out procedures at Aurora Clinics. Prospective patients actively looking for information and resources about these topics online; including via social media.

Breast Enlargement

There is a clear an obvious difference between a clinical image – posed against a background in a rigid still-frame position to show the patient at all angles before and after surgery – and a sexually enticing photograph.

It is similar to arguing that information pages about cosmetic surgery procedures are pornographic because they contain words related to bodily parts, sometimes intimate ones.

The sole purpose is to inform, educate and aid research. The language is chosen for this purpose and, other than the subject matter involved, there is no further blurring of boundaries in any respect.

Handle With Care

The handling of body photographs online, however, is still a tricky issue. There are certain factors which need to be carefully considered:

  • Obtaining consent and retaining the anonymity of the subject involved, if requested
  • More explicit images should be avoided
  • Surgical images (i.e. those of surgery actually being performed or with obvious scars or stitching) may be deemed too explicit for mainstream social media too. When we use them, we tend to keep them to internal pages rather than as Featured Images or use Warning Messages as disclaimers that there will be surgical footage involved.
  • The frequency of these kinds of images should be considered – as social media streams images and content through feeds and people use social media for fun, even the most avid cosmetic surgery researcher is unlikely to want to be bombarded with these kinds of pictures.

 

If All Is Done Properly…Where’s the Harm?

If all of the above considerations are observed, pictures can be a powerful tool for helping prospective patients learn more about procedures, identify problems, empathise with others and get realistic expectations of results. It also allows them to research the work of surgeons before getting up the courage to make that initial contact.

Some procedures are relatively obscure so people may not have known about them in order to actively look up online via the main website. Or they may have felt too embarrassed to search the term. Inverted Nipples are a good example. Yet inverted nipples pictures and articles on social media tend to get high viewings and our pictures are always very sensitively handled.

If a male nipple gets the OK to be shown online, across social and other medias, we would fully agree with the Breastfeeding campaigners that there is nothing any more offensive about Female Nipples if sensitively handled and in the correct context.

As Facebook are keen to point out: They don’t actually actively monitor all photos online. In order for a picture to get taken down, it has to be reported by somebody else.

So the main consideration when posting cosmetic surgery pictures on Social Media needs to be: might this offend others? Is this picture informative, useful and from a clinical context? If so, there should be no problem.

If you want to read more, the experts at Consulting Room really know what they're talking about and have put together vaginoplasty, genital surgery breast enlargement, nipple surgery, and scarring FAQs just for you. 

If you have more questions, you can use the vaginoplasty, genital surgery breast enlargement, nipple surgery, and scarring questions feature to talk to our panel of trained medical experts. 

If you're keen to get started with any of these treatments right away then you're in luck - those clever folks also have a list of trusted, accredited vaginoplasty, genital surgery, breast enlargement, nipple surgery, and scarring clinics in your area.

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