Facebook Takes Down Woman’s Breast Cancer PSA For Nudity

First, it came for our breast-feeding pictures. Now, Facebook has photos for one woman's PSA about breast cancer symptoms in its sights. The social media site's automatic censorship of women's nipples reached a new apex this week, when it took down Rowena Kincaid's photo of her nipple surrounded by a rash. She eventually reposted the pic with a smiley face covering the offending body part.

"Breast cancer can present itself in this way...not necessarily around the nipple, but anywhere in the chest or breast area," Kincaid wrote. "It may also start small and look like nothing, but any rash on the breast/chest that doesn't go away, or seems to be growing, should be investigated. Note that it's not always cancer, either." The Independent says the photo had made 72,000 impressions before being taken down for nudity. "It violates [Facebook's] code of practice," Kincaid wrote on the site. "[It] doesn't see what the reason behind it is, it's just automatic. It can't see that the picture I posted earlier may actually save lives."

She explained why she wanted to post the photo, telling the Independent, "When you’ve got cancer, you become a specialist in your own illness. I never knew what to look for or that a rash can be a sign of breast cancer. I woke up last weekend and thought, I have a rash on my breast and I’m going to die. If I don’t share this, it will die with me." According to the Independent, a Facebook spokesperson said the company was looking into the matter. Kincaid, a 40-year-old film editor from Cardiff, Wales, has been sharing her experiences with breast cancer on her Facebook page, Rowena Kincaid: Before I Kick the Bucket, since 2014, a year after she'd been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. According to WalesOnline, she just finished filming the final episode of a documentary for the BBC, also called Before I Kick the Bucket, about the bucket lists of terminally ill patients. Kincaid told the site that she's on her last round of chemotherapy and will be entering palliative care soon. For an uncensored illustration of this kind of breast cancer symptom, head over to NationalBreastCancer.org, which describes inflammatory breast cancer as "an aggressive and fast-growing breast cancer in which cancer cells infiltrate the skin and lymph vessels of the breast. It often produces no distinct tumor or lump that can be felt and isolated within the breast."