A woman offering free nipple reconstruction to breast cancer survivors has seen her Facebook account temporarily deleted for “sexual content”.
Sharon Price, who owns a specialist tattoo salon, provides areola reconstruction to local women at no charge. Her salon deals in cosmetic tattoos, such as fake eyebrows and nipples, and said she wants to help women who survived breast cancer gain their confidence back.
Unfortunately, Price’s Facebook account was suspended after advertising the treatment — which tattoos a nipple back onto the breasts. According to Facebook, the ad falls into the category of “sexually explicit content”, thus cannot remain on the platform, The Sun reports.
Facebook has since apologized to Price and reinstated her account following an uproar. A spokesman told the paper that they don’t comment on individual cases, but acknowledged that the page was removed in error and that Facebook “acted quickly” to correct the mistake.
Told about the decision to suspend her page, Price said: “It’s shocking what they’ve done – there was no need for it all because they were not sexually explicit pictures.
“I thought I had lost all my family pictures and 4,000 contacts and I couldn’t get them back.
“They’re allowing all sorts of stuff on Facebook but not areola restorations or enhancements for cancer sufferers!
“It’s taken me hours and hours to reinstate my account and business has slowed down because people can’t find me on Facebook.”
According to the businesswoman, many breast cancer survivors don’t have any reconstruction, which makes her work especially important, adding that it’s a life changing procedure.
She said: “When ladies have mastectomies, six times out of 10 they’re not given any reconstruction whatsoever. What we do is tattoo the nipple and the areola on to their breast to create a realistic looking breast for their own self-esteem.”
“These poor ladies have breasts removed and had a bit of reconstruction, but half of the time it’s not very good,” Price continued. “I wanted to offer them the opportunity to get their nipples back.”
She added: “There’s one lady who says it has made a total difference to her life.”
