Emma Shapiro "Exposure Therapy"
Emma Shapiro's "Exposure Therapy" is a street-level guerilla campaign which uses nipple stickers to fight for body equality, as women's bodies are shamed and censored for something ALL bodies have: nipples.
In the last couple years the project has grown to a presence in 40 countries, with over 45 new "Nipple Contributions" representing our truly diverse and beautiful bodies for our stickers. While the project spreads physically via the nipple sticker campaign, it also engages with education and collaborations on the theme of body-equality and sexist censorship, something which affects artists daily.
The main way the project empowers our community is via Instagram, which is one of the main offenders of art, education, and advocacy censorship. A couple weeks ago Instagram "disabled" the HQ account for the project, @Nipeople. The new account is @nipocrisy_
Soon after, Shapiro was featured by FreeMuse, and international artist's rights organization as part of their "Reclaiming the Space" campaign to highlight women artists around the world who are being censored. Shapiro has also published a piece with Hyperallergic about the hypocrisy of social media censorship, and its effect on artists as well as many others, "Facebook's Censoring of Women's Bodies is Nipocrisy"
This movement is growing rapidly as more artists, activists, educators, and entrepreneurs are seeing the damage that sexist censorship causes in their lives and work. It is important for artists to be aware of this issue, as it affects the access to success and opportunities for many artists simply because of the medium they use-- not to mention its bias against women artists in the art world. Follow on Instagram at @nipocrisy_ , https://exposuretherapypro.wixsite.com/mysite, and join the newsletter for updates and calls-to-action.
