I was careful to write this post about why I don’t accept your challenge

In the last two weeks have you got a Direct Message like this on Instagram?…

“I was careful to choose who I think will meet the challenge, but above all I know who shared this type of thinking, among women there are several criticisms; instead, we should take care of each other. We are beautiful the way we are. Post a photo in black and white alone, written “challenge accepted” and mention my name. Identify 10 women to do the same, in private. I chose you because you are beautiful, strong and incredible. Let’s ❤ (heart) each other”

Or how about this other version:

“I chose you to do the challenge. Among women there are several criticisms. We should take care of each other. We are beautiful the way we are. Post a photo in black and white alone, written “challenge accepted” and mention my name. Identify 50 women to do the same, in private. I chose you because you are beautiful, strong and incredible. Let’s ❤ (heart) each other!”

I got even the Spanish version, which I am not going to quote here, but by now you get where I’m coming from. Besides that DM, I am pretty sure you’ve seen a bunch of black and white pictures on your feed, most of them selfies of the women you follow on Instagram with the caption #challengeaccepted blah, blah, blah.

I am not going to lie, the first message I received about this challenge gave me a “hearts-in-my-eyes” kind of feeling. But for some reason, I did not follow through. I waited. For days, every single time I opened my IG there were more and more black and white pictures or selfies with the same caption. I got a second DM from another woman in my contacts, somebody I really admire, appreciate and love, but still, I didn’t post anything. Finally, one of my closest friends, one that I have known since high school direct messaged me with that challenge (the Spanish version), and that made me explode.

I couldn’t believe that it had to take a silly challenge on IG for one close friend to tell me that I am beautiful, strong and incredible. And my inmediate response to her was: “really? why haven’t you told me that before? This is just bs” – She didn’t reply at all, she read my words, but didn’t say anything and our chats continued as usual through Whatsapp with no mention of that exchange.

Do I think she is lying? I don’t know, I feel she was just going with the flow or with the trend on IG, and didn’t really thought through it. So why did I explode? Why am I making a big deal about this? Because this is supposed to be a challenge for women to help or motivate each other, but if you don’t motivate the friends or the people who care for you the most, what is your deal?

My point with this rant is to call us out, us women to really help and motivate each other IN THE REAL WORLD, in the day-to-day basis. We can tell our friends, our coworkers, our mothers, sisters, cousins, mothers-in-law that they are amazing, brave and gorgeous. We don’t have to wait for a trendy challenge to come up to post a selfie of ourselves that at the end will not accomplish anything. In my eyes, this challenge only feeds the narcissistic and self-center nature that social media has deepen in all of us. That doesn’t help or motivate any one to accomplish great things, and neither help all the women victims of domestic violence in Turkey.

In case you didn’t know, this whole challenge started as a way to get attention for the death of several women, young and old, in Turkey in the hands of their partners. There were another hashtags in Turkish to type in the caption of the post to raise awareness of this issue, but they got lost in the ocean of black and white selfies, you can read more about it here.

So arriving to that news really made angry and glad at the same time. Angry because there was a deeper meaning in all this black and white posts, and at some point was ignored or erased from the original message. Glad because I decided to wait and did not post a picture right away for a shallow reason. I still don’t know if I am going to post my black and white selfie, I don’t know if I am going to accept the challenge in English or Spanish, and I don’t know if I ever going to tell my friend something about my feelings about the challenge.

All I know is that, I am going to make sure that every woman that is close to me in any way, work, school, neighbor or at the gym, knows how much I appreciate her work, teachings words, company, etc. I am not going to let that social media dictates what, when and how I am going to show my respect and support to other women in my life. The question is… are you?