People love to throw around the idea that we 'are too easily offended' these days. Which is an interesting thing to say because it can reveal a little about which side of the fence you sit on with certain political issues.
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But if there's one thing I thought we could generally agree on, it was to support cancer survivors and their families. Whether that's through donations, services, emotional support or otherwise.
But if you've read our lead story today online or in the paper, you might wonder why someone would have such a problem with a campaign that celebrates survivors of breast cancer and raises money at the same time.
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The posters that are part of the campaign themselves are completely harmless. They show topless people holding pink buns obscuring their nipples while those that have had mastectomies proudly show their scars - with nothing to hide.
Facebook took these images down citing a policy breach, which is absurd in its own right, considering the content that Facebook seems otherwise happy to advertise and host every day. Violence, death, sexualised nudity and more. But oh no, let's take a hard stance against breast cancer survivors.
I think it's dumb enough that we live in a world with an antiquated double standard when it comes to nipples. You can't walk down a magazine or skincare aisle without seeing countless topless men, but god forbid anyone gets a look at a female nipple.
What if the image of the topless woman had a male nipple placed over it? Would it be okay then? This is all compounded by the fact that the Baker's Delight/BCNA images don't even show any nipples. The closest you get is a scar where one would have been.
What's shameful about that?
This ignorance hasn't been confined to social media. Staff at Mudgee Baker's Delight saying that they've received far more negative feedback to the posters than positive from their own customers.
If anyone is to be ashamed of anything, I think it should be the people that see an obscured photo of a human being celebrating the immense challenge they've overcome with body positivity and thinking 'this isn't okay'.
We've published one of the 'pink bun' photos in our newspaper and on our website. We're happy to say that we aren't ashamed of these people nor do we think it's 'inappropriate'.
I think they should be commended.
