It is a black-and-white photograph of a heavily pregnant Erin O’Connor touching her baby bump with an expression of maternal bliss on her face.

For the 48-year-old model, who has worked for Dior, Versace, Alexander McQueen and Chanel, it conveys the “abundance of life being right there” under her fingertips when she was pregnant. But to Instagram it was merely a nude photo of a woman’s body.

O’Connor revealed on Friday that after she posted the photo on the social media platform to celebrate Mother’s Day in the UK on 15 March, Instagram removed her post for breaching “nudity guidelines”.

O’Connor said Meta, which owns Instagram, had messaged her to explain that the photo had been deleted for breaching these guidelines.

The message included a note on “freedom of expression”, which stated: “We want you to share freely with others. We only remove things or restrict people to keep the community respectful and safe.”

Alongside the photo, taken in 2014 by the photographer Nick Knight, O’Connor had written a post paying tribute to “all those who continue to nurture, support, love and protect children (close to home and across the world) in every way, shape and form”. Both were removed.

Shortly before Mother’s Day last year, on 30 March 2025, she posted the same photo alongside another from the same photoshoot, and a poem: “We can sit like this / You and me / My baby boy / For a few seconds longer / Because what else is more / Important to do?” This post has not been removed.

O’Connor said she had complained to Meta that its decision to ban the beautiful photograph of her pregnant body this year, while women were “hypersexualised on a daily basis”, was an example of double standards.

Speaking to an audience at the National Gallery in London, who had gathered to hear her being interviewed by the BBC Radio 4 presenter John Wilson for the gallery’s monthly Picture This series, she added: “It feels inconceivable that a heavily pregnant naked woman could be perceived as offensive, when she stands in her full power, her body at its most extraordinary, embodying its innate ability to grow, birth and sustain new life.”

She described Instagram’s ban as “so annoying”, adding: “It’s such a shame that that would be offensive in the 21st century, and yet in galleries everywhere you have these very sensual and erotic images of women.”

O’Connor was eight and a half months pregnant when she posed for the photo 12 years ago and it was the first time she had ever allowed herself to be photographed naked.

“[My son] Albert arrived a couple of weeks later and I did the interview to accompany these pictures when I was in labour in the hospital bed. It was a lovely distraction, I’m not going to lie,” she said. “It really wasn’t about nudes, it was about expectation … That abundance of life being right there.”

The model recently celebrated her 30th year in the industry and revealed she was going through perimenopause. She was once described by Karl Lagerfeld as “one of the best models in the world” but she told the audience at the National Gallery she had spent most of her career feeling uncomfortable in her body.

It had only been in the past three years that she had come to accept herself, she said: “It took 45 years. I’ve had three years of living well and truthfully, and it’s the most wonderful thing.”

Meta and O’Connor have been contacted for comment.