Blake Lively recently deleted almost all of her Instagram posts.
While that was just a temporary measure meant as a promotional stunt for her upcoming film,
The Rhythm Section, Pinterest recently banned photos of Blake Lively's wedding to Ryan Reynolds
from their site for a much different reason.
Several sites are cracking down on pictures taken on plantations, and Pinterest is one
of them.
According to E! News, Lively and Reynolds were married in 2012 on Boone Hall Plantation
in Charleston.
Boone Hall was once a plantation where African American slaves were forced to harvest pecans
and peaches as well as produce bricks.
The plantation was later turned into an events site, but the horrifying history of slavery
on plantations has not been forgotten.
Photos of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively's plantation wedding have never been released
publicly, and their privacy was lauded at the time.
"It just goes to show that if you really do care about protecting your personal life and
taking that route, it can be done."
However, if any ever do leak, or are officially released by the couple, they won't be on Pinterest
or several other sites.
A spokesperson for Pinterest told BuzzFeed News that the company is restricting plantation
wedding content and that they are also de-indexing Google searches for plantation weddings on
the site.
Users are still able to search for such content, but will see an advisory that the content
might violate the website's policies.
A spokesperson said,
"Weddings should be a symbol of love and unity.
Plantations represent none of those things.
We are working to limit the distribution of this content and accounts across our platform,
and continue to not accept advertisements for them."
Civil rights advocacy group Color of Change has been pressuring companies to stop promoting
plantations.
In a letter to wedding site The Knot and Pinterest, the group wrote,
"The decision to glorify plantations as nostalgic sites of celebration is not an empowering
one for the Black women and justice-minded people who use your site.
Plantations are physical reminders of one of the most horrific human rights abuses the
world has ever seen.
The wedding industry routinely denies the violent conditions Black people faced under
chattel slavery by promoting plantations as romantic places to marry."
According to its chief marketing officer, The Knot is working with Color of Change to
alter their guidelines.
Going forward, wedding vendors on websites owned by The Knot will not be able to use
language that celebrates or romanticizes plantations and their history in any way.
While vendors will still be able to list plantations as wedding venues, they won't be able to glorify
them using words such as "elegant" or "charming."
These language guidelines apply to all wedding venues with a past history of slavery, not
just those specifically billed as plantations.
Zola and DotDash have also cracked down on plantation weddings after being contacted
by Color of Change.
Arisha Hatch, the VP of Color of Change, said that the campaign is meant to expose the disrespectful
nature of plantation weddings, telling BuzzFeed News,
"If we were talking about concentration camps, it would be weird and disrespectful and egregious
for folks to be seeking to have their weddings at these locations.
We're trying to elevate public awareness around the ways in which corporations can enable
such disrespectful behavior."
Hatch said that Color of Change is targeting wedding platforms rather than plantations,
as the platforms don't directly profit from plantation weddings and are therefore more
likely to hear the organization's concerns.
She told the outlet,
"We understand that these wedding platforms have less of a stake in continuing to promote
these sites, versus the plantations themselves.
While it won't end the practice entirely, [this campaign] will hopefully begin to shift
how the broader public thinks about this sort of celebration."
Although the crackdown on plantation weddings is fairly recent, the backlash towards such
ceremonies isn't new.
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have come under before for their plantation wedding.
In 2012, Grantland wrote about the couples', quote, "creepazoid" wedding, slamming Boone
Hall for bragging on their website about some of the location's features which include "original
slave cabins" and a road named "Slave Street."
In spite of the backlash, Reynolds and Lively have continued to remain silent about their
controversial plantation wedding.
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