Facebook has apologised for rejecting an advertisement featuring a photo of a plus-size model after saying the image violated the social network's ad guidelines by depicting "body parts in an undesirable manner".
The advertisement, which featured a photo of popular plus-size model Tess Holliday, is for an upcoming talk show about body positivity, titled "Feminism and Fat", by Australian monthly talk show Cherchez La Femme.
While the Cherchez La Femme page was allowed to feature the image as the cover photo for the event, it was barred from using this image in a paid advertisement for the show.
A personal message to the page administrator explaining the Facebook Ads Team's choice stated that "Ads may not depict a state of health or body weight as perfect or extremely undesirable," including images featuring "close-ups of 'muffin tops'," "people with clothes that are too tight," or "people pinching their fat/cellulite,". The image of Holliday did not fit any of these specific descriptions.
Facebook claimed that "ads like these are not allowed since they make viewers feel bad about themselves".
Cherchez La Femme's talk show is advertised to discuss fat acceptance and positivity movements and the promotion of "good health at any size", as well as "the policing of women's appearances", of which many users have pointed to Facebook's ad rejection as an example.
"Facebook has ignored the fact that our event is going to be discussing body positivity (which comes in all shapes and sizes, but in the particular case of our event, fat bodies)," Cherchez La Femme wrote on the event page on Thursday.
Facebook's explanation of the advertisement's rejection pointed to the company's "Health and Fitness" advertising guidelines for further information. While the guidelines focus largely on the portrayal of body fat, the essence of this focus is to discourage advertising unhealthy weight loss solutions, or weight loss solutions that disparage their target audience.
In a statement on Monday, Facebook apologised for rejecting Cherchez La Femme's advertisement, stating that the ad was incorrectly prohibited as the ad does in fact comply with the social network's guidelines. "We apologise for the error and have let the advertiser know we are approving their ad."
At the time of writing, no reports can be found of Facebook banning an advertisement featuring photographs of bodies that are known to have been artificially altered using programs such as Photoshop.
While the social network hides search results for popular hashtags promoting eating disorders, its selection of suppressed hashtags is not as extensive as that of other social networks on which they are used, such as Instagram or Tumblr.