Opening up Instagram, I was annoyed to find an alert pop up immediately.
‘Your page can’t be recommended to non-followers,’ it read, and I rolled my eyes. Hard.
This was not the first time I’d faced repercussions on my account. It wasn’t even the second.
In fact, in nine years, I’ve had this eighttimes. And each time the reasons get more and more ludicrous.
As a sex educator and sex worker, I understand that my content isn’t for everyone, but the work I do is important.
On my feed, I cover everything from sex education and body honesty –the lesstoxic version of body positivity,which is when you talk about the times you love and hate your body – to mental health.
That means I often post about things like LGBTQ+ rights andpointing out the hypocrisy in what men can post but women get flagged on, especially those in the sex educationalindustry. But I’m also one to push the boundaries when it comes to my images.
I’ve posted pictures of everything frommy nipple hair, celluliteto my shaving rash.
Yet this recent ban came after I uploaded an image of me in a bikini where I wasn’t showing anything more ‘untoward’ than abelly.
That post was meant to help other women celebrate their bodies, but Meta’s insistence that it ‘cannot be recommended to followers’ perpetuates the idea that only one type of physique is beautiful.
As I have discovered, that is simply not true.
Growing up, the relationship I had with my body was complicated, at best.
Like many others I felt suffocated by the 90s size zero red circle of shame. For those that don’t know, this was a particularly bleak time when women’s magazines used to highlight cellulite, stomach rolls and sweat patches as something wholly undesirable.
From the age of 14 I feared gaining weight and suffered from disordered eating for years as a result. And as I went through my teens I always thought that my body wasn’t good enough with one of my biggest hang ups being my boobs.
Surrounded by images in the media of pert, even, large breasts with little pink nipples I was crippled with thoughts that mine were, at best, abnormal.
The reality of course is I have very normal breasts. They’re small with big dark nipples and come with all the normal accessories like nipple hair, spots, textured skin and veins.
Yet I was convinced they were somehow wrong.
I wish I could go back and give my younger self a hug and show her how toxic it all was. Instead, I had to navigate my own way through it.
At the age of 19 I began expressing my body in the way that I wanted, which led me to start posting nudes of myself on Tumblr. It felt empowering.
Gradually that developed into getting work experience in the p*rn industry and by the time I was 24 I was working forbig adult industry names like Brazzers,BabeStationand other webcam services.
It was only after that, that I learned not everybody looks the sameand most obviously not everyone desires the same.
I saw all the different types of bodies of the othermodels – not all of ushad the ‘stereotypical’ big boobs, slim waist, toned look I thought we needed; we were all different shapes and sizes with varyingspecialties,kinks and fetishes – which made me feel betterabout my own hang ups.
And learned that not only did my clients love me for me, but that for many, my nipples andtummywere their favourite thing.
For the first time in my life I felt attractive, sexy even.
Of course, it wasn’t an overnight change, but I did start to have the confidence to stop seeking validation. I began embracing my body for how it looked naturally andexpressing it in the way that I wanted to.
Before I would wear bras religiously to give my boobs that fuller shape or I’d wear baggy clothes to hide what was happening underneath. That was a form of protection, a mask.
Now, I proudly wear whatever I want – tight clothing, bikinis,masc/femm, bralessetc – and I don’t worry about what other people might think. I’ve also done away with bras almost for good.
What I do and how I look does still rub some people the wrong way and I have been slu*t shamed more times than I can count.
At universitya guy I fancied called me a slu*t for getting tattoos on my thighs.I don’t think I ever said anything to him about it. I just remember being so confused, angry and hurt.
But as I moved more online – especially when I started being more vocal about sex on both YouTube and Instagram – the amount of disrespectful and simply appalling abuse I’ve received has increased tenfold.
I have heard it all. From people saying I need nose and boob jobs to the more terrifying threats like I ‘deserve to be raped’ and murdered. It makes me sickwhat the guise of anonymity can do to the everyday person.
The only difference is now, I internalise their words less and most often I will just block them and move on. I don’t deserve their disrespect. And luckily, on the whole, the positivity massively exceeds the negative.
I’ve had people come up to me in the street saying, ‘you’re amazing. I love your podcast’ and even had some other messages to say how the posts and podcasts have helped ‘save them’ from abusive relationships or just their own feelings about their body and sex.
Those moments alone make every negative comment worth it because I know that I’m helping people feel more confident in their own skin and really that’s all I want.
That’s why when I am restricted, suspended or even banned from social media I get more than a bit peeved. It reinforces a belief that what wesex educators andsex workers do and what we show – real bodies, real lives, real desires, real choices – are wrong, shameful and should be hidden and censored.
This absolutely has an impact, and it’s so much bigger than just a smaller follower count.
Taking down content like mine not only cuts off support and education, it is telling the entire world that sex and women’s bodies should not be seen.
But we deserve to share this content. We should be able to free the nipple, post our own bodies in a way that we deem fit, and write the wordss3x, ple@sure, n!pple, 0rgasm, vu1va and pen!swithout being censored.
If this continues, we’re teaching a whole new generation of women that unless their body meets Meta’s requirement it’s not worth seeing. And that is simply not true.
Every body is beautiful. Every body deserves to be celebrated. And no-one’s body should be censored.
You can follow Reed on Instagram here. And you can listen to ComeCurious here
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Metro has approached Meta for comment and will update this should they respond
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