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Instagram reality is often remarkably different from actual reality, but that truth can easily get lost in feeds of perfectly pretty square images. But one Instagrammer is taking scrollers beyond the filters and the staging and the editing to show the striking difference between the two — and delivering a powerful message in the process.
Instagram user Megan Jayne Crabbe, a body-positive role model who beat anorexia and now uses the handle @BodyPosiPanda, posted a side-by-side image to the social media site to highlight the differences between posed photographs and reality. In both images, she's wearing the same purple lingerie, tie-dye hair, and infectious grin — but that's where the similarities stop.
"REAL TALK: The photo on the left is staged as hell," she writes in her caption. "I was told where to put my legs, how to angle my arm, which way to tilt my hips and even how to hold my fingers. My eyes were watering from the false lashes and my hair will probably never look like that again. THESE ARE THE TYPES OF IMAGES WE COMPARE OURSELVES TO EVERYDAY! A posed, polished, perfectly lit snapshot of the highlight reel."
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The side-by-side comparison was part of a series of photographs that shed light on the "highlight reel" versus reality on the blog Curvy Kate "because behind-the-scenes deserves to be celebrated too," Crabbe writes. "Our bodies are glorious from every angle. Posed or unposed. Polished or not."
It also is part of a larger trend on Instagram — one where several fitness bloggers and social influencers are taking to their feeds to get real with these side-by-side photos. Fitness blogger Madalin Giorgetta showed what a difference just posture and flexing can make, while fellow blogger Sarah Puhto highlighted sucking in versus reality.
By posting her side-by-side shot, Crabbe hopes that the dangerous practice of comparing yourself with professionally posed, filtered, or edited images stops. "We sure as hell don't need to compare ourselves to anybody's highlight reel," she writes on Instagram. "After all, the model in the magazine doesn't even look like the model in the magazine most of the time." #Preach.
Related: Fitness Blogger Posts Instagram of Powerful Before-and-After in Reverse
