Cherchez la Femme, an Australian group, tried to place an ad to promote body-positive event “Feminism and Fat” which included a picture of Holliday as the main image on the event page. Australian feminist group voiced their complains and Facebook responded by saying, “Ads may not depict a state of health or body weight as being flawless or extremely undesirable”.
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A post by the organizers fumed at Facebook for ignoring the fact that the event is meant to discuss body positivity, particularly for plus-size women, and that the social network seemingly had no idea that plus-size women can also feel good about themselves.
Facebook has been alleged to block an ad which seemed to portray Tess Holiday, a plus-sized model in a bikini.
Facebook’s bias toward nudity has been a constant source of conflict for the social media site’s users.
Cherchez la Femme’s followers were equally outraged, posting that they were “horrified” and calling the policy “bulls***t”.
This ad rejection forced the group to appeal the decision and for a while Facebook apparently stood behind their decision.
On May 23, Facebook changed its stance and apologized to the group, The Guardian reports.
According to Cherchez la Femme, Facebook’s ad team told the group the advertisement violated their guidelines.
Meanwhile, the group’s co-producer, Jessamy Gleeson, is spitting mad at how Facebook handled the whole shit storm.
Our team processes millions of advertising images each week, and in some instances we incorrectly prohibit ads. It notes, “If you’d like to boost your post, you’ll have to recreate it with a policy-compliant image and boost it again”. It posted a screenshot of Facebook’s response about the banned ad.
Visualize, if you will, a world in which “overhanging fat” is not automatically deemed a ploy to make women feel very bad about themselves. “We have now approved the image and apologise for any offence this caused”.
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As the size-22 model becomes more and more popular, breaking barriers in both plus-size and mainstream modeling, people have plenty of opinions. “We would like to see Facebook seriously reconsider the policy that leads to this situation, and consult with feminists and body-positivist activists to rewrite and readdress this policy”, she stated.
