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# Facebook Censors Photo of Copenhagen's Beloved Little Mermaid Statue
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/facebook-censors-photo-of-copenhagens-beloved-little-mermaid-statue/
- Published: 2016-01-04T22:55:40.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:58:50.000Z
- Description: For more than a century, Edvard Eriksen's bronze statue of "The Little Mermaid" has perched quietly on a waterside rock in Copenhagen, offending virtually no one.
- Author: Carey Dunne
- Tags: In Brief, Censorship, Copenhagen, Facebook, Public Art, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:17 (2016, 2017, part 1)

![Mette Gjerskov's Facebook post (screenshot via Mette Gjerskov/Facebook)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/01/lil-mermaid-facebook-censored-lede.jpg)

Mette Gjerskov’s Facebook post (screenshot via Mette Gjerskov/Facebook)

For more than a century, Edvard Eriksen’s bronze statue of “[The Little Mermaid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FLittle%5FMermaid%5F%28statue%29?ref=hyperallergic.com)” has perched quietly on a waterside rock in Copenhagen, offending virtually no one. It’s the country’s [most photographed statue](http://www.visitdenmark.com/denmark/little-mermaid-denmarks-most-photographed-statue?ref=hyperallergic.com), snapped some 5 million times every year. According to Facebook, though, photos of this bronze rendering of a [fairy tale](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27200/27200-h/27200-h.htm?ref=hyperallergic.com#li%5Fmerma) character are too obscene to post on the social media site, as one Danish politician recently learned.

This past week, Facebook prohibited social democrat MP [Mette Gjerskov](https://twitter.com/mettegjerskov?ref=hyperallergic.com) from posting an image of “The Little Mermaid” on her page because it featured “too much bare skin or sexual undertones.” This, despite [Facebook’s community standards policies](https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards) explicitly stating the site “allows photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures.” Apparently bronze mermaid boobs are an exception.

When Gjerskov appealed to Facebook, the site [reversed its decision](https://www.facebook.com/mettegjerskov/posts/171557279869313) and agreed to free the mermaid nipple. (It’s worth noting that Eriksen’s statue is arguably less risque than Disney’s [hypersexualized but Facebook-condoned rendering](http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-15/entertainment/ca-1802%5F1%5Fbig-leap?ref=hyperallergic.com) of the Little Mermaid character as “a sexy little honey-bunch with a double-scallop-shell bra and a mane of red hair tossed in tumble-out-of-bed Southern California salon style,” as Michael Wilmington described the cartoon in the [*Los Angeles Times*](http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-15/entertainment/ca-1802%5F1%5Fbig-leap?ref=hyperallergic.com).)

Once clear of Facebook’s overzealous censors, the Danish politician ran into another hurdle when she tried to post an image of the sculpture on [her blog](http://politik.tv2.dk/2016-01-02-sogneraadsmentaliteten-hersker?ref=hyperallergic.com), which she writes for the Danish public news station TV2 — it became a potential copyright violation. Eriksen’s family is notoriously [aggressive about enforcing the statue’s copyright](http://www.thelocal.dk/20140816/denmarks-iconic-symbol-that-we-cant-show-you?ref=hyperallergic.com) and has been known to sue media outlets for displaying or broadcasting images of it.

“It turns out that you can’t take photos \[of the artwork\] … without generous payment to the artist’s heirs. It’s the law — which Parliament adopted,” Gjerskov wrote.

This is only the latest in a slew of [Facebook censorship](http://hyperallergic.com/255541/new-site-lets-you-report-facebook-and-other-networks-when-they-censor-art/) cases that have sparked outrage among the social media site’s users. In 2011, for example, a French teacher had his Facebook account suspended after posting a photo of Gustave Courbet’s painting “[L’Origine du Monde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Origine%5Fdu%5Fmonde?ref=hyperallergic.com)” (1866), which the site’s moderators took for pornography. This sparked a four-year ([and counting](http://hyperallergic.com/209077/four-years-later-man-still-fighting-facebook-for-censoring-courbets-origin-of-the-world/)) legal battle.

And back in 2013, Hyperallergic itself was [Facebook censored](http://hyperallergic.com/64031/we-got-facebook-censored/) for posting [an article](http://hyperallergic.com/63605/kate-durbin-finds-virtual-moments-of-adolescent-vulnerability-in-girls-online/) that included artist Kate Durbin’s photo of a woman’s exposed butt. Despite this and other brushes with [Facebook law](http://hyperallergic.com/tag/facebook/), we opted against censor-barring the nipples of “The Little Mermaid” in this article, because we’re just that transgressive.

*h/t* [*CPH Post*](http://cphpost.dk/news/facebook-censors-little-mermaid-photo-for-nakedness-and-sexual-suggestiveness.html?ref=hyperallergic.com)