University women's rowing club banned from Facebook after their nude charity calendar was branded PORNOGRAPHY (Video)

The group’s aim was to drum up more support from fans around the world and top their £3,400 total raised for the charity.
But the girls have been left devastated after Facebook removed their page ‘Warwick Rowing’s Women’s Naked Calendar’ for its ‘explicitly sexual content’.

The rowers were told they were breaching the social media sites’ ‘nudity and pornography’ policy.

The group has already shot its 2015 calendar, which is due to be released in October this year



Facebook has completely removed the page after stating that the page's content breached its 'terms of use'


Organiser Sophie Bell, 20, has blasted Facebook’s decision for harming their chances of raising more money for charity with their 2015 calendar, due to be released later this year.

The history and politics student, who has just finished her second year, said: ‘Facebook can unpublish pages after it gives you a warning to make amendments.

‘That happened to us a couple of times over the last year where they would ask us to remove certain pictures randomly because they breached their nudity and porn regulations.

Organiser Sophie Bell, 20, has blasted Facebook's decision for harming their chances of raising more money


Miss Bell believes Facebook's decision is 'borderline sexism' as the male group is allowed to keep its page






The rowers have sent countless emails to Facebook in a bid to try and get their page back up and running


One of the pictures taken as part of the women's University of Warwick Rowing Society's charity calendar

‘We always made the amendments and took the pictures down - even though they were no racier than the others - but a few days ago they emailed and said the page was being completely removed.

‘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.

‘To have this page unfairly taken away is going to affect our sales for the 2015 calendar and decrease the amount we can make for charity.

‘There are loads of similar nude charity calendars who have Facebook pages plastered across the site - why aren’t they being asked to takes theirs down too.’

The 17 members of the group posed naked next to the River Avon and their boat house in Warwickshire



The page - 'Warwick Rowing's Women's Naked Calendar' - had over 2,000 likes before it was taken down

‘We don’t think they have a right to take it down. We’ve tried to get in contact with Facebook and sent emails but have got no response.’

Hettie Reed, 22, who has just graduated from Warwick and also organised the calendar, said: ‘The photos we posted are all tasteful and couldn’t be considered obscene or pornographic.

‘They cited that it is due to the nudity and explicit images - we couldn’t believe it.

‘All of the girls are strategically covered up and our calendar has been praised for its artistic and tasteful nature.

‘The photos are no different from the holiday snaps of men and women that appear on everyone’s Facebook feeds.

‘It is definitely going to hamper the success of the girls’ future charity efforts which is disappointing.’The sites community standards section also states: ‘We impose limitations on the display of nudity.

‘We aspire to respect people’s right to share content of personal importance, whether those are photos of a sculpture like Michelangelo’s David or family photos of a child breastfeeding.’

The rowers raised £600 for Macmillan Cancer Support with their first calendar in 2013 which caused controversy when it was branded as ‘tacky’ for portraying women as ‘sex objects’.

But undeterred they took it a step further and this year’s calendar, which features the girls completely naked, has made a whopping £3,400 for charity.

And they have already shot the 2015 version which will go on sale at the end of October this year.The 2014 calendar can be purchased from the University of Warwick Rowing Club's website. 

Calendar girls and members of the rowing club - Frankie Salzano, 22, Hettie Reed, 22, and Sophie Bell, 20