As a member of the famed downtown dance troupe The Dazzle Dancers, Cary Curran (aka Cherry Dazzle) spends much of her time celebrating the semi-nude human form in all its gyrating glory. It's not shocking, then, that Curran decided to make a photo of her pregnant body (decked out in little more than gold pasties, a thong bikini bottom and a liberal sprinkling of gold body glitter) her Facebook profile picture. The surprise came when Facebook shut down her account as a result.
Facebook administrators told Curran, who first discussed her story on East Village Radio's Hella Fabulous this morning, that this picture constituted sexually explicit material, which is banned by Facebook user's Statements of Rights and Responsibilities. To Curran, however, this categorizing of a woman's body—that was not, in fact, naked—would be comical were it not so sad.
"This is a disgrace," Curran told New York Press. "Pregnant women are beautiful." Besides, she laughed, "if you go through Facebook, you'll see guys more exposed than me, with bigger boobs."
This is not Curran's first run-in with Facebook administrators over the supposed sexual content of her photos. She received a warning after posting a picture of herself backflipping out of the vagina of a giant female statue, and again for a picture featuring her breasts covered in flame-shaped pasties. All three instances, Curran notes, stems from a larger cultural anxiety about the female body.
"I think people are terrified of the vagina or something." Curran says. "It's the human body! We all have one. People are so scared of bodies in this country. It's insane. I think that why we have so many health problems."
For now, Curran is going about the mundane tasks that come with a Facebook shake-up: ensuring acquaintances she did not randomly "de-friend" them, or trying to remember e-mail addresses that were once a profile-click away.
She noted one development, however, with a hint of triumph: apparently, several other people have designated the photo of the pregnant Curran as their profile picture. As far as Curran knows, not one of them has been removed so far.
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