“Free the nipple” is back in the headlines, this time after Instagram issued a public apology to director Pedro Almodovar for censoring the poster for his latest movie Madres Paralelas. Designed by artist Javier Jaen, the image shows a lactating nipple cropped to resemble a crying eye, and Instagram widely removed it for allegedly violating the platform’s guidelines. After the apology, Almodovar declared victory over the algorithm, and the episode drew extensive media coverage, including an article in the New York Times.
Despite sounding like a slogan from a much earlier era, the body-equality call to action “Free the nipple” is only about a decade old. It emerged in the Instagram age and became widely known through social media, yet #FreeTheNipple itself is hidden on the platform. Searching the hashtag on Instagram produces the notice: “This Hashtag Is Hidden.” Adding a year, such as #freethenipple2021, does work, but it effectively turns the movement into a yearly trend rather than the sustained campaign for change it is.
The movement gained momentum in 2012, when director Lina Esco made the film Free The Nipple, about a fictional group of young women confronting the double standard and demanding equality. Set in New York City, the production staged real protests, including women in pink balaclavas running topless through Times Square, evading police and wheat-pasting “Free the nipple” posters onto walls. There were arrests, media attention, and the birth of #FreeTheNipple.
The connection between Hollywood and topless activism stretches back much further. In 1934, Clark Gable caused a sensation by appearing shirtless in It Happened One Night, while four men were arrested that same year in Coney Island for going topless at the beach and fined one dollar each for disorderly conduct. More demonstrations followed, eventually leading New York City to allow men to go topless, and in the 1980s further protests extended that right to women as well. That is why Lina Esco chose New York City for her film, where toplessness is legal even though she and her cast still faced harassment during filming.
Although the film faced obstacles from production through distribution, the phrase that was meant for theater marquees instead became a viral hashtag used by well-known figures to challenge social media censorship of the female-presenting body. Miley Cyrus posted a topless photo with the #FreeTheNipple tag, only for Instagram to remove it immediately. Scout Willis also posted herself shopping topless in New York, captioning the image: “Legal in New York, but not on Instagram.”
From there, “Free the Nipple” protests spread internationally. In 2015, 17-year-old Adda Smaradottir was harassed online for posting a topless photo, prompting strong support in Iceland. The day after she wrote about the incident, women and allies across the country, including a member of government, went topless in solidarity and used the hashtag #FreeTheNipple in their posts. That same year, five women in Taipei held their own private “Free the Nipple” protest, shared the images online, and were then shamed by their community, while Facebook deleted the photos.
Groups inspired by the slogan have since appeared around the world. In 2016, “Free the Nipple Brighton” launched an annual march, and two members of “Free the Nipple New Hampshire” were fined after doing topless yoga on a beach. In 2019, the “Free the Nipple Fort Collins” association filed a federal lawsuit and won, effectively giving women the right to go topless in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma. This year, a “Free the Nipple” group also unsuccessfully sued Ocean City, Maryland’s restriction on exposed female breasts.
The slogan has united artists, activists, and advocates across the globe around a shared challenge to the double standard many people face every day. Its widespread presence underscores the continuing need for the movement. Yet while court victories have helped shape the fight from the 1930s to the present, social media platforms have largely remained resistant to calls for change.
Instagram’s apology to Almodovar was recently praised as a win, but artists and activists on the platform say the reality has been different. Alongside the hidden #FreeTheNipple hashtag, those who embrace the movement’s ethos have reported more deleted posts and disabled accounts following the public apology. Savannah Spirit, curator for the Don’t Delete Art campaign, which works with international advocacy groups to highlight art censorship on social media, said: “It seems suspicious that after Instagram’s apology to Almodovar, artists, models and people posting work about the body have been feeling a more rigorous crackdown on deletions and entire profiles erased.”
If Instagram’s apology is genuine, the company should reconsider policies that limit artistic expression and reinforce the very double standard “Free the Nipple” seeks to challenge. From the start, the movement has been a forceful demand for change, and the fact that #FreeTheNipple remains hidden only demonstrates how necessary that demand still is.
