As we have seen many times in the past, people come up with unique and creative ideas to raise money for the much-needed research and awareness in medical fields. Be it the ice bucket challenge or matching of pledge drives through public broadcasts, they all succeed in invigorating those who are involved.
Similarly, the men’s University of Warwick rowers started their viral nude calendar in 2009 with the intention of raising money for cancer research and support. They started a dedicated Facebook page, which was well received by the school and local residents.
The women’s rowing team felt left behind, so they also decided to join in on this idea. In 2013 the women’s group stripped down and started their separate Facebook page and nude calendar. This time, however, the audience response wasn’t the same. For some people, the photos of these naked, gorgeous women were offensive to them. They started receiving complaints from prudes from every corner.
These complaints weren’t affecting their activities in any way, so they decided to simply ignore the criticism.
However, things changed for them when Facebook decided to delete their page while keeping the men’s page untouched. Maybe Facebook doesn’t categorize the male body to be as explicit nudity or whatever the convoluted reason was, their action wasn’t justified and this fact upset many female rowers, including the organizer of the calendar, Sophie Bell.
It was recently stated by Bell, “Facebook has unpublished our page a few times since we created it, due to what it deemed “inappropriate images”. Other participants of our women’s nude calendar felt degraded by Facebook. The group complained that their objective was just to reveal what the body of women athletes should look like. Photos of nude female rowers were supposed to be appreciated instead of being bashed. Unfortunately, the audience was not able to see the art behind the Warwick Rowers nude calendar.
This story gained tremendous media attention and it was at that time when Facebook decided to lift up the ban, but that doesn’t absolve or resolve everything.
Final Thoughts
This event brings up few questions and suggestions. So, let’s start with the suggestions. First, before planning for similar artistic ideas, it’s best to be mindful about the response from prudish trolls. There are many hypocrites out there in the world, and they love to congregate in large numbers around places online where they can’t help themselves and choose to barrage others with their ideologies, shaming them for not seeing the world through their narrow lens.
This story also begs to question: If Facebook is the arbitral of so-called “fake news” and speaks for the “community” when censoring such pages as the Warwick Rowers’ nude calendar, then why do they only admit their flawed analysis when put under public pressure? Maybe Facebook’s facade of unbiased regulation is a warning sign to others who may or have faced censorship that they should use other platforms to communicate.
There are other colleges and sports that have created nude calendars such Oxford University Women's Rugby team. I didn't find a facebook page for them, but I did notice that many of their nude photos were shared on facebook.
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Paddles, on the other hand …..