Lindsey Pelas Slams Instagram Over Alleged Double Standard Between Female, Male Influencers

Lindsey Pelas doesn’t feel Instagram treats its male and female users equally. The social media influencer voiced her concerns over the mistreatment of women on Instagram in an interview with TMZ. “Instagram has been pretty consistently discriminatory against women’s businesses and women’s bodies oftentimes,” Pelas explained. Pelas’ star on Instagram sees her with more than 8.6 million followers and clocking in close to 150,000 routinely on her posts, many of which show the model sporting swimwear.

She claims the company targets women for how much “skin surface” they show as the site’s guidelines even explicitly single out women. “The issue is when you decide that something is sexually suggestive instead of a woman deciding she wants to have sex with you, it’s promoting rape culture,” Pelas stated. She also called out Facebook on similar accusations, even mentioning how it’s extremely hard to promote menopause products on the site while things like male enhancement pills are prevalent. Her gripe with the rules “not applying equally” across the board are also echoed by other influencers who support her message. “In my opinion that’s cherry-picking winners and discriminatory,” Pelas added. “It’s not fair to any kind of free market.” She also feels the same about Twitter.

Her interview also went into her thoughts on the country lagging behind in cyber legislation. Pelas feels that America is “far behind” in this category and that there’s a big difference in laws applying to the real world and those that need to be in place on the interwebs. “I think it’s really important that our government notices that,” Pelas said. She said what is going on now, suggesting that Instagram can pick and choose what is and what isn’t appropriate, goes against the ideology of democracy.

The 29-year-old first gained fame for her work in publications like Maxim and Playboy. In the latter, she was named the Cyber Girl of the Month in May of 2014. The Louisiana-born model has also dabbled in the acting industry along with working on her own brands, even launching a podcast in 2018. Pelas has also provided content on her OnlyFans account along with her own calender series that she has been doing for the past couple of years. Along with the millions of followers on her Instagram, she also has another 1.2 million on Twitter.