In the wake of the Virginia massacre at a high school on Wednesday, Madonna took to Instagram to share her support for students and teachers at the school in her home state, and her brief objection to being kicked off the social media site. “Damn!! Instagram deleted this for ‘sexual images.’ I actually do some nude photos sometimes but a snap of me bending over & covering my nether regions with my hand to pee in a bucket doesn’t look like too much to ask,” the pop icon wrote. “I’m tired of people being against things that they don’t understand & what they fear.”
The Instagram pic in question was a shot of Madonna in black and white sitting on a lindy hopper while holding a wad of dollar bills and in another the singer is sitting on a toilet, with her hand pointed towards her privates. “How many people have to die before we realize violence begets violence and this is the type of f—ing country we have to live in?” she wrote. “It’s a shame but I’m fighting back.”
After quickly logging into Instagram to fix the issue, Madonna responded in a second post with a more clearly expressed concern for the teenagers her photo depicted as her audience. “I was just mentioning that it was a high school class picture, which I thought is a huge double standard,” she wrote. “Society and the media demonize our youth while at the same time glorifying and showing their innocence.”
For some in her nearly 5 million followers, however, the in-app deletions of the iconic singer were too much. “You disrespect the group of children who lost their lives in the Virginia schools,” one follower wrote, and another said, “She posted about young people. Two young people lost their lives. Why delete?”
Read the full story at The New York Times.
Related
Gigi Hadid defends ‘sexy’ Instagram, vows to ‘say what I mean’
Social media companies take back firm’s promise to build gun violence and access ‘safe zones’
Girls with guns don’t have problems, learn about ‘being independent,’ Buhari tells schoolgirls