On Saturday, Justin Bieber uploaded a photo to Instagram. He does this regularly — at 3,280 photos and counting, he’s one of the more prolific celebrities on the service. But while Justin is no stranger to posting selfies and photos of his friends, this time, he posted a photo taken by his friend Johnny Shahidi. It was a photo of a completely nude Bieber, shot from behind.
Now, this isn’t the first time Justin has uploaded a photo of his rear end to the platform. He’s done it before in June of last year, though he eventually pulled the photo and apologized if it offended anyone. And while we don’t know yet if this photo will also receive the delete treatment, it doesn’t quite matter: the minute something is up on the internet even for a minute, it’s up there forever.
But what’s notable about this photo isn’t so much that Justin is naked. (And, to be fair, you can’t really even see anything all that shocking beyond Justin’s butt and aggressive tan line.) It’s the fact that nowhere in the hours since he uploaded the photo did Instagram remove the image for indecency — as the platform immediately would have done had there been a nipple in the photo — or criticize Justin for being a “bad role model.”
Why? It’s simple. Male nudity is treated in a much different manner than female nudity. A man is often treated as a separate entity from his sexuality (and men are also expected to own their sexuality in ways that women aren’t). There’s no secret there’s a double-standard when it comes to nudity in our society, but it’s even more paradoxical on social media, where women’s bodies are policed by the pixel. Meanwhile, people looked at Kim Kardashian — who recently posted a nude photo but edited it with strategic bars — and immediately shamed her for not being a “good role model” for her daughter and her younger fans. But Kim is a wildly successful businesswoman who has capitalized on her appearance to its furthest logical conclusion time and time again. This isn’t new for her either, so the fact that people are still policing her isn’t only shaming, it’s kind of boring at this point.
