[UPDATE 4/9/10 12:00pm: Apparently, Ann's fan page is back on Facebook, but the Roxy Music picture's still missing. Again, kids, that's how censorship works. Ask for Ann's panties back!]

[Thanks to Lina Lecaro for the tip.]

Facebook, which started off as a “Hot or Not” type application for horny preppies to evaluate Harvard coeds, has unceremoniously booted off the amazing singer and performer Ann Magnuson for posting this photo:

Credit: Austin Young

Credit: Austin Young

The picture is, of course, an hommage to the iconic 1974 cover for Roxy Music's Country Life, which caused some trouble in the US at the time (you can still find copies in thriftstores of the alternate US cover, a photo of just the lawn without the lingerie models).

Enraged Facebookers have started posting Magnuson's offending pic as their profile photos, but we hear they also are being booted off the now-demure social network for some kind of “indecency” bullshit. (By the way, most gory/violent/shockingly bloody content is rarely banned from Facebook. People have even reported seeing what appear to be actual “Faces of Death”-type photos on profiles.)

This is what the always articulate Magnuson had to say about Facebook's Victorian, hypocritical idiocy to the Dangerous Minds website:

My photographer friend Austin Young called me today to ask if I was mad at him. Mad? Yeah, because he'd been blocked from my Facebook profile. Then my husband FWD'd me a message from a mutual FB friend that my page had been taken down.

“a question… call it odd coincidence, but i somehow just now noticed that ann has vanished from fb. hmmm… since i can't imagine it was anything i said wink i'm hoping she didn't get deviously hacked or something.–T”

I panicked. Deviously hacked??? What's next? My bank account? But I went on FB and discovered my personal profile had, indeed, been disabled. WTF? I could not for the life of me figure out why.

UNLESS….

Unless it was a photo I did with Austin that I recently posted as my profile pic. It spoofed the iconic Roxy Music album cover for Country Life. We shot it over a year ago. It was a bit of an afterthought but it turned out so fantabulous that I wanted to save it for something special. […]

I thought, well, it is a TAD racy but not really considering what's out there these days–case in point: Michelle “Bombshell” McGee. I mean, I wasn't wearing a Nazi's officer's cap with outstretched arm and improvised Hitler 'tache.

But someone must've complained. I read the FB fine print. “Obscene”? “Pornographic?” It seemed pretty harmless to me. (The only violation may have been the copious amount of photoshopping.) I suspect that complaint MIGHT have come from someone in my homestate of West Virginia. I've had to block a few of 'em for the right-wing harangues. I try to be friends with everyone but….it can't always be done. […]

Facebook, what gives? Can I have my original profile page back? There were so many great comments on that photo, the best being from someone who knew the original photographer of the original Roxy album cover who offered all sorts of insider info on how the photo was shot and who those girls were and what Bryan Ferry was up to in Spain where he found them!

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