Your body does not exist

Nudity. What does is mean? Nature or censure? Are we ashamed when we see our skin?

We all have some taboos or limits, but as art is, they are relative and personal. Should we have a common rule? Facebook has it: sculptures yes, real bodies not. Boobs yes, nipples not.

What if we are talking about art? Where is the limit? Noemi Blanco, actress, model, singer; has experienced theses limits on her Facebook account. Let´s follow Facebook rules and censure the body. Instead of the word “body”, let´s use just “canvas”, as you use in body painting or tattoos. Do you have any “canvas” (referring to the human body)?

Canvas. It is a beautiful concept while talking about body. Our canvas. Each of us have one, white and empty at the beginning. But it is getting full of colours, stripes, stamps, scars, wrinkles, experience, time and even art.

The own canvas is art, a biological, complicated and perfect canvas. It is a structure, a master cogwheel.

Canvas is artist´s exclusive ownership, so she or he can show it, sell it or give to whoever she or he wants. There are no rules about what to show or not on the canvas, because there are no rules for art. Each of us can or not reflect there what we have inside. Everything what we have in mind, what identifies it, a message for the world. Or even just something which is just white.

Enjoy or not any canvas is relative, art is relative. It only depends on the eyes which are looking. Sometimes, canvas could break or damage, but it could be repaired. With love, dedication, colour...and it becomes a new work of art.

Facebook Community Standards have always been prowling human bodies. Last updates were sentencing with “canvas”: “We delete photographies which shows genitals or backside in an open way. We limit some photos with female breast if you can see nipple, but we allow breast-feed or mastectomy cicatrize”.

It is a new update but still the same ideology as before. As I said, we all have canvas, since we are born, why should we feel embarrassed?

My Facebook account has been deleted at least three times, mostly when I was part of a women movement against this kind of restrictions, around 2013 or 2014. We used to post out our own professional or ordinary naked pictures. But, instead of our nipples, we pasted some man´s nipples.

Yesterday I read a critic about this topic and an expert said, “does navel-string have any gender?”

That´s it. When it´s better to see decapitated people, death dogs and war, than breast, penis or nudity; personally, my brain explodes. Moreover with this women´s nipples topic. Of course we know women are hypersexualized. They can benefit from our boobs but pretend, at the same time, we have no nipples.

Furthermore, Facebook even censured one picture of mine when I was just with my cousin on the beach.

How Facebook reports work? Are Facebook workers or users the ones who report something “inappropriate”?

Normally those are Facebook users. Actually, since these moments when Facebook blocked me, I deleted many Facebook friends. After that, it did not happen again. And if we are talking about people, about users, there is no limit between reporting or not because the limit is in their minds.

So someone reports you. What happens then?

After the report, you receive a notification. Indeed, during 3 or 4 days you cannot use your account. It is like a punishment. You can only open your main wall and see what others publish, but not even like the posts.

How you change your role from being just a normal user to be an activist?

Once Facebook blocked me, I start. This first thing I did was reading all Facebook rules, where you can read that there is no problem if you post naked work of art. So I just did it: I posted my first photo naked with Venus boobs sculpture. And I did not break Facebook rule. Stupid, isn't it?

In fact, Facebook says: “we allow photography´s paintings, sculptures and work of art with naked figures”. What is the difference between a sculpture or a painting, and a photograph?

I cannot see any limit, even if I would like to know where it is. Actually, to describe what art is, is really complicated, and there are so many answers as people in the world. So if we follow this idea, art has no limits. Furthermore, why can we only see nudity as an art? Why nudity is a taboo even if we are part of it? We see each other every day, we share the same bodies. I really cannot understand this idea of body as something forbidden that we should hide and even feel ashamed.


Her name is Noemi Blanco. She is an artist. Her body is part of her mind, part of her own language to express herself. For her there are no limits. Body and mind are one and there is no point for her to make any exception.

 

Sabela González

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