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A lot of people know I write for MommyNoire now and they come at me with all sorts of suggestions on what I should talk about here, as a father and concerned citizen.

One of my good friends hit me with a recent controversy surrounding an image on Facebook that resulted in a challenge to its terms and asked me to write about it. A Facebook mom and professional photographer named Jill White took a picture at the beach that evoked the classic Coppertone ad of the 1950’s. That image, an iconic one, shows a dog pulling a little girls bathing suit bottom down under the caption “Don’t be a paleface!” beneath it.

In the photographer’s image, it portrayed a young girl pulling down the bathing suit bottom of another young girl. They were dressed identical and appeared to be twins, even though their faces are obscured by the view. For all normal intent and purposes, the image seemed to be a super cute, innocent picture of two kids at play on a beach.

Not.

It seems like some of Jill’s “friends” took offense to the seemingly innocent picture and complained directly to Facebook. A rep for Facebook followed up and told Jill to either remove the image or make it private. Now, I’ve got some questions. What did the people see in the image that represented something offensive? Have they been examined for any sort of sexual perversions? Why didn’t they bother to reach out to Jill personally and explain what was problematic?

Group think and mob mentality runs rather rampant on the internet and its a normal occurrence with social media. This is different. What manner of human believed the image in question is actually perverse enough to report Jill White? I’m thinking that they must have had their own dark, twisted thoughts when they saw a little kid’s backside. Who else would jump out of the window to report such an image?

But, then I got to thinking even farther…

I was talking recently to one of the father’s I know, and he revealed to me that he goes on the internet to know where all the registered sex offenders are in the area in which he lives. He’s not looking to hunt anybody down, but he simply wants to know as much about the people in the neighborhood for safety’s sake too. In a similar vein, I’m wondering what becomes of the images we upload and add to these social media outlets. Is there somebody out there getting off to images of my daughter or my friend’s kids? I definitely don’t upload any images that could be construed as sexual by normal standard, but when you think about it, what’s normal when you are dealing with the inner minds of people?

It all goes back to my mantra of protect and serve the kids at all cost.

I didn’t see anything wrong with the image that Jill White uploaded (nor did my friend), but everything that transpired in the aftermath of it all makes me suspicious of those behind the anonymous complaints. One commenter said, “The problem is Facebook did her a favor because are many sick people out there use this for child porn.” Sheesh, like that/like that???

Eventually, Jill added the image again with a smiley-faced emoji over the baby backside in question, bowing down to the gods of Facebook. “Good NEWS…they will NOT be removing this photo!!!! But if I post the other photo again I will be banned from Facebook,” she said under the new picture.

I’m sure even the new picture turned somebody off.

Or on.

Source: Facebook via Jill White

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