A hugely popular beauty and lifestyle vlogger in the UK has been removed from the country's high school curriculum after her website published a sex toy review, news.com.au reports.
As per the publication, Zoella's content had been included in the UK's General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) curriculum since 2017.
This came to an end last week, though, when education officials swiftly axed the influencer from the list after an article titled The Best Sex Toys to Spice Up your Sex Life in 2021 was posted on her website.
The 30-year-old started making YouTube videos back in 2009. After more than a decade on the platform, she is now one of the UK's most popular influencers, with over 11 million subscribers on her main YouTube account and 9 million followers on Instagram.
Zoella (real name: Zoe Sugg) even has her own beauty and lifestyle website.
As reported by the Sun, in a letter addressed to teachers, exam board AQA explained the move was made after concerned moms and dads got in touch with them.
Sandra Allan, AQA's head of curriculum for creative arts, said in the letter:
"GCSE Media Studies includes the analysis of online and social media and we added Zoella in 2017.
"At the time, all her content was appropriate for teaching, but some of Zoella’s recent content is aimed specifically at an adult audience and isn’t suitable for GCSE students.
"As a result, we’ve removed the section on Zoella from the course, and we’ve contacted our schools and colleges to let them know."
Taking to Instagram over the weekend, Sugg explained in a lengthy post that she hadn't even been aware that the GCSE exam board had included her website as part of its curriculum.
She wrote:
"At @zoella we are a team of women who all share a joint passion for other women & subjects relating to this.
"We want to talk about taboo subjects, have conversations with experts, ask those less heard to use their voice & try and have a really varied range of topics to help, inspire or make people feel less alone. Things I wish I’d known as a teen myself.
"Our main demographic is women aged 25-35 and naturally as I have got older, my audience has grown up too & the things I want to share or shine a light on have naturally aged up to suit my lifestyle alongside the rest of the team too!"
Sugg then went onto say that the exam board clearly hadn't done much research on the website as it has a good amount of mature content, covering topics such as period sex, revenge porn, and masturbation.
The influencer added that it "worries" her that AQA thinks "16-year-olds aren’t exploring their own bodies, doing this with someone else or know what a sex toy is."
She adds: "Although we don’t aim our content at teens, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that it’s there for them to read at all & these media articles are just perpetuating the fact that female pleasure is something that we should feel ashamed of.
Sugg then goes on to thank her audience for all their "overwhelming support over this."
She concludes: "It's certainly the start of a much bigger conversation and clearly shows there is still a long way to go.
"So we will continue to write about these things on @zoella and prove that WOMEN DO MASTURBATE & FEMALE PLEASURE IS A THING (even if we're shamed and 'dropped' for speaking about it)."
