celebrity

Here's how you can help Caitlin Stasey win her battle against Instagram.

Former Neighbours star Caitlin Stasey is no stranger to causing a stir on Instagram.

The 26-year-old is a vocal advocate for real, everyday women being able to show their naked bodies – in all their glory – on social media.

She regularly posts topless, and even fully nude, pictures of herself online for her 170,000 followers, and even has a whole site dedicated to the celebration of the female body.

But here’s the problem: Instagram keeps deleting her naked snaps.

The actress’ latest photo, in which she posed topless in rainbow light, lasted a full three days on the site and appears only to have been removed today.

However, that’s longer than a lot of people expected, mostly due to the amount of likes and comments the picture had amassed.

Hoorah, we thought, at last Instagram is seeing the light!

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A photo posted by Lucas Neff (@reallucasneff) on

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But in the space of noticing the picture had managed to stay live on Instagram, and beginning to write this story, it was gone. Deleted.  Apparently for violating Instagram’s “community guidelines”. “For a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show…genitals, close-ups of fully-nude buttocks…some photos of female nipples,” the guidelines read. Stasey hasn’t taken Instagram’s monitoring (or rather, people reporting her nude photos to the social media giant) of her account lying down – each time one of her images is removed, she simply posts another. “She’s pissed that Instagram keep deleting her shots…Every time they do it, she puts up a new one to replace it,” a friend told The Sun this week.  

Kangarude A photo posted by Baby Lady (@caitlinjstasey) on

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Stasey isn’t the only celeb who’s been fighting to ‘free the nipple’ online. Just this week, Kendall Jenner hit back at those who shame her for ‘showing off’ her bare breasts.

“I really don’t see what the big deal is with going braless! It’s sexy, it’s comfortable and I’m cool with my breasts. That’s it!” she wrote in a post on her website.

There’s something you can do to help stars like Stasey win the fight to keep her photos online. And no, it doesn’t involve posting topless shots of your own.

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A photo posted by Baby Lady (@caitlinjstasey) on

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Likes and comments played a large role in keeping Stasey’s latest snap up on Instagram for as long as it lasted. While it’s now been removed, the fact that so many users engaged with the image – and the message it was sending – could hardly be ignored.

So if you like it? Double tap and give it a little heart. Or write a comment expressing the importance of not labelling images of women’s breasts as ‘inappropriate’.

While we’re pretty sure there’s not an actual person that works in Instagram’s ‘Nipple Control Centre’ (unconfirmed if such a department exists…) scrolling through feeds ready to remove topless pics at a moment’s notice, there are people who report such images for violating the site’s guidelines. Our advice to them? Just click ‘unfollow’.

We can also start reporting images that are actually offensive – those that are racist, homophobic, or promote abuse or sexual violence.

With news that a whole page on Facebook is dedicated to men seemingly ‘celebrating’ rape, it’s obvious there are far more important things to monitor than the photos a woman willingly shares of her breasts.