Well, they have this "snap judgment" feature, which is basically a photo they put up without any text to go along with it for discussion. I noticed that over a span of several days, most of the photos put up went something like: cheerleader, ballerina, ballerina, model, dancer, celebrity in a pretty dress, gymnast. (I can't find all of them now so have another random snap judgment photo.) I found it irritating that despite the almost incessant features on size acceptance etc going on at the time, pretty much all the women they chose to feature were conventionally pretty, slender women, generally in conventionally attractive, feminine poses, of the kind I'd expect to see on any other website. Many of them were athletes, but again, the athletes they chose to disproportionately feature at the time were ones that, skilled as their bodies are, are ones whose art/sport involved in a primarily aesthetically pleasing presentation of the body. (I wouldn't say that a gymnast's sport involves an aesthetic presentation of the body in the same way that a dancer's does, but the particular photo they chose to feature...) It just felt like they were reinforcing the mainstream idea of the kind of women are worth looking at. And in general, when they choose to illustrate their news roundups, etc, they tend to go for the pretty female celebrity as their accompanying photo, so overall the site felt full of the kind of uniform and conventional images of women I would think they'd try to provide an alternative for.
I complained about this twice, and was banned because apparently there is a rule that you can't complain about what is posted. (They also tried to tell me my comment broke the "don't say negative things about women's appearance" rule but I wouldn't consider noting that all these women were conventionally attractive something negative about them.) I was also careful to make it clear that it's not that I have anything against spotlighting conventionally pretty people--just about the ubiquity of it. Anyway, it was pretty ridiculous because they actually have a system where offensive posts are "disemvoweled," and they could have given me a warning that such comments were unacceptable or something--I was careful to phrase my complaint calmly and politely, and I've seen downright nasty remarks disemvoweled without resulting in a ban.
So I'm left thinking it's because I criticized them for hypocrisy rather than anything else.
They've been (slightly) better at picking more diverse photo subjects to feature since then, though.
Apparently. I dunno, many of the comments on this article are plain-out saying "this content does not belong here," and they haven't been banned for "complaining about what we choose to post."
I complained about this twice, and was banned because apparently there is a rule that you can't complain about what is posted. (They also tried to tell me my comment broke the "don't say negative things about women's appearance" rule but I wouldn't consider noting that all these women were conventionally attractive something negative about them.) I was also careful to make it clear that it's not that I have anything against spotlighting conventionally pretty people--just about the ubiquity of it. Anyway, it was pretty ridiculous because they actually have a system where offensive posts are "disemvoweled," and they could have given me a warning that such comments were unacceptable or something--I was careful to phrase my complaint calmly and politely, and I've seen downright nasty remarks disemvoweled without resulting in a ban.
So I'm left thinking it's because I criticized them for hypocrisy rather than anything else.
They've been (slightly) better at picking more diverse photo subjects to feature since then, though.
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http://jezebel.com/5582641/i-want-you-to-look-at-my-tits-because-theyre-fabulous
Although one commenter does follow up her post with "don't ban me." There's basically no real standard.
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