July 7th

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Stretchy pizza cheese!
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I thought these lil flats were gonna be a total bust BUT they are actually perfect. Like, the perfect size, the perfect shape, the perfect fit. Amazing! I already made a second pair with a modified pattern (the original is 3-piece, the mod is 2-piece) but they didn’t turn out as well so I’m planning to remod the mod.
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Gwen really likes being helpful these days. When I print things she likes to take them out of the printer and hand them to me; she gets upset if I grab the papers out of the printer myself. I’ve been making lots of little shoes & pouches out of leather, and I use these little scraps of suede to help push the needle through and she likes to pick up the pieces of suede and hand them to me, even though I already have them. Ditto with the box of baby wipes when I’m changing her little friend’s diapers; she’ll pick it up and try to pass it to me and if I don’t take it she’ll throw it at my head!

She’s super into clothes, putting them on AND taking them off. One of her faves is when I fold laundry and she has full access to a wide variety of clothes in many sizes and she can try them all on (before putting them back in their piles, she IS helping after all). She likes to take off her clothes and put them in new, exciting configurations: shirt-as-cummerbund, shorts-as-skirt, leggings-as-armwarmer. Her fave things to take off are tank tops and her sweet little jean shortalls, which is terrible because they are some of my fave things to dress her in. I am pretty impressed by her ability to squirm out of the shortalls though.

Consider that a neat segue into a topic I am supremely baffled by. Y’all might have seen a recent spate of hashtag activism (hashtagtivism?) in support of various mommy bloggers who have had their Instagram accounts suspended. A bunch of #bringbacksoandso’s and #stopcensoringmotherhoods. These suspensions seem to have all played out similarly: someone instagrams a pic of their child in a state of undress, pic is reported & subsequently deleted by instagram, they repost the pic and it is reported/deleted again (sometimes multiple times), their account is suspended, they FREAK OUT, other people FREAK OUT in support, account is restored after three days (this seems to be the standard timeframe for unsuspending accounts and NOT the result of hashtag hysteria). In some cases it’s clear that the person is deliberately goading Instagram into suspending them! This keeps happening and I am just like… what?

First, the reason why these pics are being deleted is because they are in violation of Instagram’s TOS, the TOS you have to agree to when you sign up. It’s pretty clear they have these rules in place to cover their asses (haha) so they don’t get charged with distributing child pornography (I will probably regret posting that phrase on here). If you’re SUPER desperate to share these pics, how about you just post them on your blog (which most of these women do anyway).

Second, pictures of half-naked children being deleted from your Instagram IS NOT a violation of your First Amendment rights. Look it up, in the US the First Amendment protects you from being censored by the government & any laws it might try to pass. Facebook (which owns Instagram) isn’t a branch of the government (yet…).

Third, some of these bloggers are crying out that it is breastfeeding pics that are being deleted/causing these suspensions, and using that to garner more sympathy & support from the breastfeeding community. However, I know of at least one case where once the suspended account was restored it was obvious all the breastfeeding pics had never been deleted, only the undressed kid pics. In this instance the blogger tried to backpedal and say it wasn’t about breastfeeding, but that’s not what she wrote on her change.org petition (seriously).

Fourth, why are you crying about the terrible loss of all your precious memories when your account is suspended? If those memories are so precious, why aren’t you backing them up, Carrie Bradshaw??? Instagram actually makes it super easy to back up your pics: when you post you have the option of sharing to different services, several of which (flickr, facebook, tumblr) will act as a backup. Also, if you go into the settings you can turn on “save original pictures” which will save your pictures to your phone, and from there you can back them up to your computer or the cloud or whatever. With the former you have to select where you want to share each picture every time, but with the latter it’s automatic, and if you have your phone set to back up each night then you LITERALLY do not even have to think about it.

Finally, and this is the thing I REALLY don’t get, is what EXACTLY is it that these people are fighting for? The right to publicly post semi-nude (or full nude, one popular blogger posted over the weekend about how she really wanted to post pics of her totally naked kids to instagram but all the ASSHOLES would report her, wth) pictures of their children on the internet? Really? REALLY??? Look, I don’t have a problem with kids running around with some or all of their clothes off. Sometimes it’s impossible to even keep clothes on a toddler (please see above re: Gwen). I also don’t have a problem with people taking innocent pictures of their kids like this. I have plenty of pics of my girls as babies with no shirt on or their lil buns showing. It’s cute! But I don’t POST THEM ONLINE*! IT IS LITERALLY COMMON SENSE.

This whole thing is just SO WEIRD to me, like with all the awful things going on in the world, THIS is the struggle these people have decided to hitch their wagons to? It’s like the epitome of non-problem problems. idk, what are your thoughts on this whole brouhaha?


* Ok, full disclosure, when Gwen was tiny (like, younger than six months) I DID instagram some pics of her in the bath or wearing just a diaper, but I NEVER showing her genitals or her bare bottom- they mostly just showed her face and MAYBE her upper chest/shoulders.

6 Replies to “July 7th”

  1. I agree with all of your arguments. I really don’t need to see bare baby botties or even half undressed kids. I guess I don’t care if the individual likes them and takes them because they are their own kids…but I still have a problem with full noodie pics of kids…like, they cant agree to that, it might embarrass or frighten then in the future…it may not. All I know is I’ve never taken full noodies of my kids, and never posted anything online of which I am bothered or ashamed. My kids will not be some paedos fantasy and I can’t understand any parent wanting this either. It’s just too weird.

    1. Right?? Like who looks at the internet and goes “hmm, you know what this needs? MORE NUDE PHOTOS OF MY CHILDREN”

  2. I agree too. Seems there are people in the world whose lives are so empty that they have to invent things to have hissy fits about. I am happy for them that they have no horrible, traumatic stuff happening but it might be better to save their energies for things that matter. Of course instagram have to have rules and this seems a sensible one. The only folks who could possibly object to it, apart from the child pornographers previously mentioned, are those with no brains or imagination. Might be an idea for them to GET A LIFE?

  3. Yep, those are the main things I kept thinking about too. Straight up ridiculous. Should children’s bodies be sexualized and banned from social media because they’re deemed sexually inappropriate? Nope, but that isn’t what is happening here. The fact is that posting nudes of your babes online exposes them to the whole world, including any pervert who is looking for images specifically so he or she can SEXUALIZE them!! IG’s terms of service are protecting these people’s children from that, and I feel like the parents in question just don’t get that.

  4. I said very much the same thing when I was talking about this story to my guy….I just couldn’t get why people would want to post pictures of their naked children on the web. Beyond the fact that it’s out there for the whole world, even people who are using them for not-innocent uses, to see, imagine being that kid in a couple of years, when they’re in school, and their friends… or worse, enemies, find them. I can’t think of any child who’d be okay with that, or why you’d want to set your child up for that kind of pain and embarrassment. Want to take cute pics of your toddler? Print ’em out, giggle among your friends family, tuck em away to show boyfriends and girlfriends when they’re older, but don’t post them on the Internet…

    1. I’ve read a few articles about people whose childhood pictures (innocent or otherwise, some were victimized by adults) ended up in the hands of child porn rings, and how every time someone is arrested with these pictures the authorities contact the person to let them know. I can’t even imagine how horrible that must be! And now, with all the attention these women are grasping for (via hashtag campaigns, spurious “”news”” “””articles”””, the Today Show) they are LITERALLY informing the creeps of the world where to find nude or semi-nude pictures of their children. I just… idk. I think these women have lost sight of what matters.

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