A New Revolutionary Self-Love Social Media Photo Challenge

Leveling up our self-love at every age and stage

While we can all lament about the downsides of social media — trolls, cyberbullies, our constant preoccupation with it, a veritable onslaught of bad news — there’s much to be said for how social media can provide us with a more extensive network of support. Take the photo challenges for instance. Nearly every day, I see some photo challenge — celebrating motherhood, relationships, and even just days when we feel good about ourselves.

I love to see people hyping up other people — especially among women. But I do think that this amazing source of support could actually use a small revision. I do hate to nitpick, but sometimes, we need to take a closer look at the things we do to examine if there are underlying messages that need to be addressed. In the case of photo challenges, we may need to level up our self-love so that we don’t require a challenge to celebrate ourselves.

Selfie culture is much maligned, but I love that we’re slowly starting to normalize self-love. For all the criticisms lobbed at people who frequently post selfies, the truth is that there are many healthy reasons to do it. For single people and single parents, how else will there be any photos of us living our best lives if we’re not the ones to take them? Particularly as the world stays in social distancing mode, sometimes a solo shot is the best option available to us. But it’s more than just for singles.

Often, we see women share these photo challenges, but there’s no reason men can’t also join in to share their self-love. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a self-love challenge for men on social media. Not one where they talk about not always feeling beautiful and needing a space to celebrate themselves and each other.

While patriarchal systems favor men in many ways, this is not one of them. It would seem odd for men to post such a thing (thank you, toxic masculinity), but there’s no reason men shouldn’t celebrate themselves, too. Self-love isn’t limited by gender.

We don’t actually need an excuse to post a selfie. If we feel good about ourselves, why wouldn’t we want to share a photo — not out of an overabundance of ego but to have a record of a day we felt great? Maybe we should tag it #TheDamnILookGoodChallenge and add a little #RevolutionarySelfLove. Or #MindYourDamnBusiness.

I love the photo challenges, but we don’t actually need them to share our gratitude about our relationships or parenthood or simply to say that we feel happy in the skin we’re in. As much as I love to see women hyping other women and people just being kind to other people, there should be a little room leftover for us to celebrate ourselves, too. Every selfie is the “I was here” equivalent of social media.

“I was here” parenting. “I was here” in this relationship. “I was here” living my best life. Maybe we don’t need challenges at all.

And — just maybe — we can start taking the filters out of our selfies and start normalizing beauty at every age and stage of our lives. Maybe we can celebrate ourselves at each milestone rather than trying to roll back the clock with brighter lights and stronger filters. Maybe our self-love can go from struggling to blooming — to revolutionary at last.