Glowdownchallenge: People post honest past and present pictures

Transformation posts are mostly about showing and celebrating successes on social media. With the #Glowdownchallenge, however, users have a different goal.

Photos of metamorphoses belong to Instagram and Co. like dressing for salad: chubby people turn into fit girls or boys, people with mental disorders into mental health warriors, pregnant women into mothers – sometimes with and sometimes without after-baby tummies, but in everyone Fall with child – and raw ingredients are transformed into star-rated menus. If we don't stumble over it anyway in our feed or while absent-mindedly scrolling through the depths of social media, we will find tens of thousands of posts like this under hashtags such as #transformationtuesday, #fitnessgoals, #weightlosstransformation or #finallyhappy.

Transformations can inspire – but also discourage …

What we're shown in these transformation posts is pretty much always some type of achievement, something that that person has achieved or achieved and is proud of. One of them has successfully changed her diet and thus got a waistline, the other has stuck to her training plan and can now stand on a stone block with her legs straight and the third one is now sitting relaxed with others at the table and eating pizza because she got her anorexia under control.

On the one hand, it is often encouraging and inspiring to see such success stories compressed into one picture, and those who post their achievements have every right to do so and can be really proud of themselves! On the other hand, it can also be quite unsettling – especially if you don't have a success story yourself that could be told in a post. Or to make it even more dramatic: if your own transformation looked like a misachievement.

Glowdownchallenge: It's not always uphill

Maybe Tiktok user @ gabslife99 had this in mind when she launched the "Glowdownchallenge" some time ago: People should show their "glow-downs", that is, their transformations from the peak of their external appearance to today. "I had my peak in high school," she says of herself, "I was hottest when I was 18, but today I look very different". And she is obviously not alone: ​​Numerous users followed her call and posted their glow-downs on TikTok, and the trend has now also spilled over to Instagram.

Both women and men post their – at least at first glance and in direct comparison – rather unfavorable transformations and thus make the world of social media a bit more honest, more genuine, more personable. Because with all due respect for all achievements and impressive transformations: Some of us don't get more beautiful or fitter with increasing age – and unfortunately also not healthier. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be proud of ourselves. Because most success stories just can't be told in a transformation post.

Sources used: Buzzfeed, BoredPanda, TiokTok, Instagram

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