A painting by one of Sweden’s most revered artists has been removed from Facebook as it was deemed to fall foul of the website’s zero-tolerance policy on nudity. Anders Zorn’s 1905 nude, ‘The Girl in the Loft’, which depicts a curvaceous woman leaning against a beam, was promptly removed from the social networking site after Danish performance artist, Uwe Max Jensen, uploaded it to his profile page.
Jensen, who has now been banned from posting images on the site after being reprimanded before, contacted local newspaper Sydsvenskan to complain about the controversial move. “It’s cultural imperialism if Facebook is going to determine what’s pornography and what’s art,” he said.
Jensen was fined DEK 2,000 (EUR 268) in 2005 after urinating on a wall as part of what he claimed was a public art demonstration of the transitory nature of existence. It is thought that the latest offending item, the Zorn nude, was probably reported to administrators by one of Jensen’s Facebook ‘friends’.
Jan Fredriksson, the Swedish spokesperson for Facebook, said the decision to remove the picture was an easy one as children as young as 10 use the social networking site in countries all over the world.
It is sad that even Swedes, like Jan Fredriksson, abuse the children to defend nudity ban.
“Jan Fredriksson, the Swedish spokesperson for Facebook, said the decision to remove the picture was an easy one as children as young as 10 use the social networking site in countries all over the world.” and all over the world children and young people of all ages are being harmed as a result.
It is not just cultural imperialism, there is strong evidence that Facebook are encouraging attitudes which result in immense harm, mainly to the people that they use as their excuse. It is not coincidence that the USA has ten times the teenage pregnancy rate of the Scandinavian countries. It is all down to attitudes towards the body.