Moms get Instagram's attention with cardboard and cookies
You’ve probably heard of the Instagram drama surrounding the long haired boys over the past few weeks, but I think all of the stories missed the most wholesome part, and it involves cookies, cardboard and friendship.
Let me start at the beginning. A few moms and myself post our cute long haired beach boys on Instagram. Some days they are cleaning the beaches, counting sea turtle nests, or just on some adorable adventure. Parker, Michael, Archie, London, Eli, Oli and Milo are continuing the fight David Bowie started in the 1960s. Yes that David Bowie formed a society to protect Long-Haired males. Sixty years later and the fight against gender norms is still going.
The controversy came when Instagram mistakenly started deleting our photos with our boys with long hair in board shorts. Instagram has Community Guidelines that include some strict nudity clauses to protect children. Girls cannot be topless on Instagram. I see nothing wrong with topless children or adults but it’s not my social network. Instagram kept flagging and removing our boy’s photos for nudity. Boys in board shorts do not go against Instagram’s Community Guidelines. After so many removals, Instagram disables accounts.
Our solution was definitely different and very creative. Tori Spooner (@parkersavesthesea) lost her account and decided to fight it. She posted Parker holding a sign that read “Dear Instagram, I’m a boy, I just have long hair, quit deleting my photo.” Other moms like myself followed her lead, until we had a real revolution #longhairedboyrevolution. Boys all over the world shared the sign and their own personal story of the same problem. Still Instagram didn’t notice or understand our appeals. Then the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri posted in his stories, an “Ask Me Anything” post. We banded together and all asked him about our long haired boys. He answered one of our questions and said he would look into our problem. We all jumped up and down, IRL. Nothing happened. Our photos and accounts were still coming down.
We noticed on Adam Mosseri’s Twitter and Instagram account that so many people were bothering him to get their accounts back. So the boy moms and I all started brainstorming. We wanted the nicest most momlike way to get his attention, so I sent him a cookie cake. Then Tori started reaching out to press outlets. This helped. Local news channels, Buzzfeed, HLN, People and so many more since have picked up the story and got official answers from Instagram. Oli and I even went on HLN and nervously giggled the entire time. Then it happened, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri posted a photo with our cookie cake and accounts started coming back.
We got through to Instagram with cardboard and cookies, moms are awesome when we work together. There is still quite a way to go and we are all waiting for the Instagram HQ to invite us to give them all of our creative mom solutions. But we started something awesome and I’m so proud of my long haired boy mom friends!
