(CNN) –– Instagram has been invaded with images that women, famous or not, have published of themselves along with the words “Challenge accepted”.
There don't seem to be many incentives behind the photo challenge. And it may be due to the design.
Celebrities such as Gabrielle Union, Kristen Bell and Kerry Washington have accepted the "challenge", which seems to consist of publishing a black and white image of herself as a sign of female empowerment. There is no obvious cause of social justice here, other than motivating women to share photos of themselves where they feel safe.
Here's how it works: Women nominate each other to post a monochromatic image they like. They share her photo, usually with the words “challenge accepted” and she tags #women supporting women (#womensupportingwomen), and then they mention other women to post their image.
It is reminiscent of the Dolly Parton challenge, in which users posted four different images of themselves that they would use as alleged profile photos for different social networks like LinkedIn and Tinder (an “intellectual” image for LinkedIn; another more sensual one for Tinder) . That challenge worked primarily for users to post four flattering photos of themselves at once.
Ava Duvernay mentioned that in her "accepted challenge" post. Selma's director shared a striking image of her black and white face, writing that she was “pretty sure this is just a good excuse to post photos,” but she gave in to her friends' wishes.
View this post on Instagram
Pretty sure this is just a cool excuse to post pix, but I'm gonna always roll with whatever @janineshermanbarrois and @thevioletnelson ask me to do no matter what - so here goes! Challenge accepted. #womensupportingwomen [📷: the great @brigittelacombe]
A post shared by Ava DuVernay (@ava) on Jul 27, 2020 at 9:42 am PDT
The challenge was interpreted by other celebrities as a display of sorority. Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson posted a selfie and wrote, "It is NOT a challenge to love my sisters, but a gift and bond that we have and that we should cherish as we walk this earth."
Critics of the challenge have called it an empty gesture obstructing social media amid the double crisis of protests against racism and the covid-19 pandemic. Those who participated defend the photographic challenge as a harmless way to support their friends and take a breather from these crises.
So others have tried to incorporate racial justice into their posts. After sharing an image of herself, Padma Lakshmi, host of Hulu's “Top Chef” and “Taste the Nation,” included four images of black women killed during or after interactions with the police, including Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland, along with information about their stories and the status of the agents involved in their deaths.
Many more non-celebrities also post their own “challenge accepted” photos: The English phrase has been used more than 4 million times on Instagram. But those words reappear from time to time. Recently, international Instagram users were using them in posting images to show that they were staying home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Instagram Viral Challenge