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Female Rowing Club's Nude Charity Calendar Is Awesome, But Not Allowed On Facebook (Photos)

by Alexia LaFata

The University of Warwick Female Rowing Society's naked calendar photoshoot raised thousands of pounds for charity, but Facebook banned the photos, calling them pornography.

Seventeen female rowing club members posed nude in action in their boat house. They occasionally wore life vests, but most pictures feature their behinds and glimpses of their breasts.

The girls sold 1,500 of their 2014 calendars, raising £3,400 for Macmillan Cancer Support through advertising on social media.

After the photos were removed, people took to Twitter to express their disappointment of Facebook's censorship policy -- after all, the same type of calendar issued by the men's team was not taken down.

Is this really not appropriate for Facebook? @facebook think it's #pornography! #facebookbannedourpage pic.twitter.com/BDcAXFTAUL — UWBC Girls Calendar (@nakedgirlsrow) July 17, 2014
@nakedgirlsrow @facebook double standards at their very worst. The money raising these girls do is superb and important to the charities! — Simon Pilkington (@SimonPilko) July 17, 2014
@nakedgirlsrow @facebook people can post CCTV of someone getting hit by a train, but this picture is offensive!? Ok then... — Ruaraidh Callinan (@pukkaefc) July 17, 2014

Last year, Facebook told the group to fix some photos in their 2013 calendar -- which raised  £600 for the same cancer organization -- that violated similar pornography rules, and the girls complied.

Organizer Sophie Bell, 20, criticized Facebook for this year's decision, which would affect sales of the 2015 calendar.

She said,

They say it is because of nudity but we are not violating any of their terms and all the pictures we post are not indecent images or inappropriate. It is awful for us because we had over 2,000 likes which provides us with a large platform for reaching out to our target market. We are students so we don’t have a marketing budget so we do use social media as the main way of marketing it.

In an e-mail response to this year's violations, Facebook wrote that "continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in the permanent loss of your account."

The 2015 calendar is already in progress.

Photos Courtesy: Twitter