If you don’t know who Nyome Nicholas-Williams is, she’s about to become your new favorite person. This plus size model has accomplished the impossible feat of getting Instagram to apologize for their ridiculous algorithms. The social media platform is notorious for censoring images left and right without paying attention to context.
Nyome has one straightforward goal: to feel respected, and that she’s allowed to use the space of social media without being “censored and silenced” based on the kind of creator she is. While half-naked, skinny white women are frequently plastered all over our Instagram feeds, it’s not as likely to see women of color and plus-sized creators on the platform.
Back in 2020, she did a shoot with photographer Alexandra Cameron resulting in a stunning picture where a topless Nicholas-Williams is posed tastefully with her arms wrapped around her chest with closed eyes, giving off a dreamy and artistic vibe. IG quickly deleted the photo and warned this user that her account could be deleted.
But with slender Caucasian women posting much more provocative images online, Nyome shed a much-needed light on the issue of racial bias on social media platforms. She felt silenced, and believes that other marginalized BIPOC women who don’t fit the mold of what’s “beautiful” are also being silenced and prevented from celebrating their bodies.
Tons of users fought back and posted pictures of the model with the hashtag #IwanttoseeNyome. Their posts got deleted just like hers, but after this happened with enough users, the social media giant finally took note. The issue is, it takes tons of non-marginalized voices for a difference to be made, and that’s the chance that Nyome is trying to make.
The model herself spoke publicly on the hypocrisy over Instagram’s racist actions against black content creators, and their supposed support for the Black Lives Matter movements, showing a severe disconnect.
The CEO eventually admitted that IG might suffer from “algorithmic bias” and policies that don’t exactly treat everyone equally. Talk about stating the obvious!
He admitted, in a blog post, that “words are not enough” and soon after this statement, hired an internal equity team to root out this bias, and the platform began a campaign called #ShareBlackVoices to put a spotlight on Black creators on IG. The CEO also reached out to Nyome specifically via email to apologize and schedule a call.
While censorship against Black artists has been ignored for years, Nyome is ensuring that things are different this time, since she got IG and its parent company Facebook to agree to update their nudity policy to tackle discrimination that so many users of different body types face. Other plus-size influencers like Australian comedian Celeste Barber has also had to deal with censorship issues after posting a parody recreation of a Victoria’s Secret model’s post where she is cupping her breast.
Today, their nudity policy will allow nude people to hug each other and cup their breasts, hopefully opening the door for more diverse work to be seen. Still, many people feel that this policy chance is “too little too late” for a world plagued with systemic bias in beauty and fashion. After all, their goal is to ban toxic and inappropriate content, and let’s be real, women aren’t the majority of human beings posting that kind of stuff.
Instagram is one of the most used apps in the world — with over a billion users, it should be able to show all the complex details of the beauty spectrum as they are. By Instagram automatically taking these posts down, it invalidates these less socially accepted forms of beauty and keeps telling these beautiful women that their bodies are somehow wrong. Nyome Nicholas-Williams
completed her photoshoot as a sort of “confidence shoot”, and IG taking it down ruined that goal. -until she and her fans decided to do something empowering about it.
This policy chance and intervention on the park of body positivity activists is a sign of a bigger movement around the world known as body positivity. While many men are starting to gain confidence by shedding the restrictive beauty standards of the past.
Celebrities like Billie Eilish and Lizzo are helping advance this movement, and the more we encourage people to be their true, authentic selves without expectations, hopefully we can start to break down beauty stereotypes and raise our little girls with a healthier mentality.
