Students’ Powerful Photo Campaign Calls Out Social Media For Body Image Pressures
Two students have produced a powerful photo series calling out social media for putting pressures on women [Photo: Instagram/unedityourself]
Who hasn’t sat scrolling their social media feed and felt increasingly rubbish? From heavily edited selfies portraying seemingly perfect bodies, to softly filtered lifestyle shots of seemingly perfect lives, it’s little wonder one in five of us say social media makes us feel depressed.
Noticing the impact it was having on her own self-esteem, British student, Jade Johnson, decided to call out social media for creating a pressure to conform to unrealistic ideals. During her second year of university, Jade felt herself being “sucked” into the constant strive for social media perfection. Noticing that she received more likes for the images that were edited and less for those that were more natural, she found it increasingly hard to extricate herself from an online image that wasn’t really her.
“I […] built my personal profile around this, even though deep down it made me feel terrible as I was no longer being who I wanted to, but what social media wanted me to be," Jade said in a statement emailed to Mashable.
The photos tackle the subject of body-shaming on social media [Photo: Instagram/unedityourself]
So alongside fellow Birmingham University student, Laura Dawkes, the 22-year-old photography student decided to make a visual campaign for her final project with the aim of highlighting the pressures social media piles on people’s self-image.
The campaign is called UnEdit and is a collection of images chosen to portray an extreme version of what some women feel and think when they scroll through social media.
This picture highlights the pressures some feel to opt for plastic surgery [Photo: Instagram/unedityourself]
From taking selfies after cosmetic surgery, to wrapping their bodies in cling film, the images show women in a range of situations and are accompanied with words and poems which aim to call out the body-shaming culture breeding on social media.
Jade and Laura have received praise for their final project [Photo: Instagram/unedityourself]
“The campaign was built to show women we do not need to give into the pressures of social media and we should be proud of who we are rather than letting it bring us down,” Jade explained to Mashable.
“We wanted UnEdit to build us back up and give women that confidence to believe they are beautiful.”
If it was down to us girls, we’d definitely give you a first.
View the campaign in digital magazine format or via their Instagram account.
What do you think of the photo campaign? Let us know @YahooStyleUK
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