While Instagram hasn’t exactly been the safest place on the internet, a lot of people are fortunately still using it to advocate for a healthier online environment. It’s true anxiety-inducing images of a kind of reality that seems too perfect to be true dominate the platform, but on the other side of the spectrum are those who promote authenticity, and against the grain, show relatable images that encourage others to gain self-acceptance, like these accounts that show real bodies to promote body positivity. Particularly, there was a recent trend on Instagram that champion this cause: the #sensualselfiechallenge. This amazing project was initiated by Ev’Yan Whitney, a “sexuality doula” and sex educator. Encouraging women to celebrate their sexuality, the premise basically is for participants to take one selfie per day for five days that “highlights your body, celebrates your sexuality, and encourages you to take up space.” Ev’Yan urged them on saying, “we will guide you along the way with prompts, affirmations, inspiration, and encouragement.”
If you’re intimidated because the first thing that comes to mind with the term sensuality is posing racy photos, Ev’Yan assured that “You do not have to be nude in order to play in the challenge.” She explains, “This isn’t about titillation. It’s about making an intention for the next five days to use self-portraiture as a way of delighting in your beauty, body, and sensual essence. And you can do so fully clothed.”
During the course of the challenge, thousands of photos were posted with the hashtag. Women of all types participated. One of them was Nora Sanchez, who shared her journey to HelloGiggles. “Admittedly, I felt super overwhelmed by the challenge because I’m a mom now,” she confessed. “But then I thought it over: If I am a new mom who struggles with body image, isn’t that exactly why I should participate in the #sensualselfiechallenge?”
She revealed that since giving birth, she has been on a postpartum fitness journey. She admitted that like others, she can be pretty vain and would constantly post photos of herself on IG, but that like others too, she always made sure to hide her biggest insecurities, which were her stretch marks and uneven breasts. She started the challenge with posting a photo that barely showed her insecurities, to slowly pushing herself and finally going all out and fully exposing her breasts on the fourth day (“because of Instagram’s policies, we’d obviously have to edit out our nipples”). It wasn’t an easy feat, and to conquer that particular challenge, she knew she had to be brave. “I thought about my uneven breasts: I did not want to admit to my little Instagram sphere that my boobs are so, so lopsided. But I also did not want to live in denial about my body. Nor did I want to pretend that I am the only person with breasts that are not the same size,” she said. “Though my breasts were already uneven, they have only grown more uneven while breastfeeding my son. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but still, I took the photo. I opened up to the love my breasts deserve without imposing a need for unrealistic symmetry on them.”
Overcoming that insecurity and the experience as a whole was an exhilarating achievement for her. In a way, it liberated her. She shared that throughout the challenge, she received nothing but positive comments and words of affirmation from her IG family. She thought, “How could that be? I did not know, but I only wanted more of it. I wanted to preserve the safe internet space that I’d created, a space that allowed for nudity and feminine love, undisturbed.”
Ultimately, she concluded that she needed the challenge, and she’s grateful for the way it changed how she views her body. “Even after four days of expressing my powerful body, I was having a hard time accepting that the challenge was almost over. Luckily, Ev’Yan ended the marathon of sensual selfies with a prompt dedicated to beauty, airiness, and flowers. I smiled in my photograph because I had f*cking made it. And I was having fun. Against all odds—and most of those odds being my own funny thoughts—I completed the #sensualselfiechallenge with a hell of a lot more self-love and bravery than I had before.”
Here are other users who joined the challenge too, and in the process, felt more empowered as women taking charge of their bodies.
Art by Marian Hukom
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