Instagram has been overrun with women, famous and otherwise, posting black-and-white images of themselves with the caption, “Challenge accepted.”
There doesn’t seem to be much motivation for the photo
challenge. That may be by design.
Celebrities like Gabrielle Union, Kristen Bell and Kerry
Washington have accepted the “challenge,” which seems to involve
posting a black-and-white image of oneself as a show of women’s empowerment.
There’s no obvious social justice bent here other than to encourage women to
share photos of themselves where they feel confident.
It works like this: Women nominate each other to post a
monochrome image of themselves that they presumptively like. They share their
photo, usually with the caption “Challenge accepted” and the hashtag
#womensupportingwomen, and tag other women to post their own.
It’s reminiscent of the Dolly Parton challenge, which
encouraged users to post four different images of themselves that they’d use as
hypothetical headshots for different social media sites like LinkedIn and
Tinder (a studious photo for LinkedIn; a sultrier shot for Tinder). That mostly
functioned as a vehicle for users to post four flattering photos of themselves
at once.
Ava Duvernay touched on that in her “challenge
accepted” post. The “Selma” director shared a
striking-black-and-white headshot and said she was “pretty sure this is
just a cool excuse to post pix,” but she relented at her friends’ behest.
Other celebrities interpreted the challenge as a show of
sisterly support. Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson shared a selfie and wrote
“it is NOT a challenge to love my sisters but a gift and a bond that we
have and we should cherish as long as we walk this earth.”
Critics of the challenge have called it an empty gesture
that’s clogging up social media feeds during the dual crises of protests
against racism and the Covid-19 pandemic. Those participating defend the photo
challenge as a harmless way to support their friends and take a breath from
those crises.
So others have tried to incorporate racial justice into
their posts. After sharing an image of herself, Padma Lakshmi, host of
“Top Chef” and Hulu’s “Taste the Nation,” included four
images of Black women killed during or after interactions with police,
including Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland, along with information on their
stories and the statuses of the officers involved in their deaths.
Many more non-famous folks are posting their own
“challenge accepted” photos, too — the phrase has been used over 4
million times on Instagram. But the hashtag creeps back up again every so
often. Recently, international Instagram users were using the hashtag with
pictures to show they were staying home to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
