If your philosophy is that "seeing is believing," you may want to question what it is you're really seeing–especially on Instagram. Most users' feeds are flooded with before-and-after selfies that allegedly show extreme physical transformations: women who lost every bit of pregnancy weight within two months of childbirth, dieters who went from having pot bellies to flaunting washboard abs within eight weeks, and so forth. But, as it turns out, many of these "body transformations" are faker than a three-dollar bill.
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A number of Instagram users have been revealing how to drastically change your appearance in a selfie via simple pose changes, clever lighting choices, filter selections, better posture, self-tanner, and hairstyling techniques.
Instagram user MamaLionStrong, for instance, fought back against the pressures placed on new mothers to bounce back to their pre-baby weight the minute they step out of the hospital. Two months after giving birth to her third child, she uploaded a "before" photo in which she's wearing a bikini, rocking a bit of a pouch, her stance perfectly relaxed. She then took a second photo in which she adopted a wider stance, cocked her hip to lengthen her torso, and positioned her arm at a 45-degree angle to fake some muscle tone, placing her hand on her hip. She also adopted a fuzzier camera filter and tilted her head slightly. When she fused the two photos together, she successfully demonstrated just how easy it is to fake a transformation online.
To show the tools of deceit commonly used by the fitness and weight loss industries, Australian personal trainer Melanie Ventura posted some dramatic before-and-after shots on Instagram last year (see the picture above) and, in the caption, she said her transformation took all of 15 minutes. She then detailed exactly how she achieved the results–not by juicing, abandoning dairy and carbs, or spending three hours at the gym daily, but by changing from an ill-fitting pair of bikini bottoms that pinched her waist to a more forgiving pair, sucking in her stomach, standing taller, placing her hand on her hip, and letting her hair down. She also revealed that by zooming in on the "before" photo and zooming out on the "after" photo, it created a powerful optical illusion so that her midriff was the focal point in the "before" shot and her entire silhouette was captured in the "after" image–the latter yielding more flattering results.
This is one Instagram trend I can definitely appreciate! Women already have to cope with so much pressure regarding their appearance. One minute, we're being told to be waif-like, and the next, we're bombarded with "strong is the new skinny" messages. We're supposed to have Michelle Obama's arms, Gwyneth Paltrow's stomach, Cameron Diaz's legs, and a thigh gap to boot. And now, fitness enthusiasts are taking to Instagram and "documenting" their radical physical transformations, which allegedly happen in the span of three weeks, making regular women all the more frustrated when they hit the gym and diet obsessively and attain no such results. Why? Because those transformation photos could very well have been doctored in the first place!
Which is not to say that transformation photos can't be helpful and inspiring. But if these changes seem to be happening way too quickly, do be skeptical about the photos' authenticity. And always remember that looks can be deceiving! What's important is being healthy–not trying to achieve some unattainable ideal imposed upon us by society.
Images via melvfitness, mamalionstrong/Instagram
