This woman is smashing unrealistic beauty perceptions, one Instagram post at a time.
Imre Çeçen is just one among an army of beautiful, intelligent and business-savvy women clogging up your Instagram feeds in high fashion fitness gear, almost invariably holding a bowl of chia seeds and grinning whiter-than-white smiles, presumably pretending they enjoy eating foods that tastes of cardboard.
These highly curated feeds offer us a glimpse, a mere 30-second snapshot of what life allegedly looks like for social influencers. But Imre is determined to go a little deeper and share the reality behind her ‘grammable lifestyle.
Imre, more often than many other models out there in the ether, shares candid photographs that outnumber her curated bank of posed images.
She hopes they will keep her followers informed about the realities of our constantly changing bodies and make sure young, vulnerable minds don’t aspire to an unrealistic idea of what women look like.
In these photographs, Imre shows what a difference 30 seconds can make to any photograph with some clever trickery of light, posing, posture and even confidence.
Despite being a picture-perfect Instagram fitness model and lifestyle blogger, according to the surface of her social media, Imre refuses to feed into the damaging ideals the picture-sharing platform is often accused of perpetuating.
Dutch-born Çeçen was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and Pfeiffer’s disease, which motivated her on a journey to fitness.
While she undeniably works hard for the body she has, and regularly shares diet and gym tips, Imre has decided to shine a light on what really goes into her social media persona – and those washboard abs.
Imre has posted a series of photographs showing how lighting can completely alter the composition of a photograph – and even the person pictured within that square of pixels.
Sharing a side-by-side comparison of herself, Imre captioned it:
Todays influencers often seem to forget that when you only post pictures like the right one your followers may think you look like that 24/7 #wedont
Every single body is beautiful in its own way… I think it’s important to know “insta models” don’t look like that all the time.
The model, who lives and works in Amsterdam, is also trying to banish the phobia of ‘fat rolls’ that is plaguing a worrisome amount of women in today’s beauty obsessed society.
She writes:
On tv and in magazines we only see airbrushed bodies, “flattering” poses and even bodies which had so much surgery that you might wonder if it’s still human. This changes our ideas about reality and the “perfect body”.
Suddenly young girls seem to think they need a butt so big that you can’t even turn around anymore without smacking someone down with it. That shit is more dangerous than idiots walking around with giant backpacks or pipes #youcouldkillsomeone
Imre, who also has a masterful grasp of metaphor, shared another side-by-side comparsion and wrote: “If instagram was a river and you went fishing the main thing you’d catch would be “flattering pictures” & “flexed bodies”. Realise that you only see part of someone when you scroll through their account!”
Musing over why Insta models only share images of so-called perfection, she added:
So why do we mainly post pictures like the left one? I think everyone has their own reason. It could be insecurity but it could also be to show off hard work!
Imre has honestly exposed the alterations models are capable of making to their images – and in turn, the very bodies they stand in.
The contrast between the expertly – and slyly – doctored images and the originals is astounding to those of us not well-versed in careers dictated by appearance.
Imre also tries to get her followers to embrace the perfectly natural processes of biology that occur in the female form.
From bloating to weight and water gain, of course, our bodies change throughout the day.
Imre hopes her posts will normalise this and debunk the myth of unrealistic body aspirations.
After all, according to the model, with a little body confidence and some clever posture, these poses are easy to replicate, if you are so inclined to look entirely different in real life and on the internet.
Instagram has received much criticism for promoting pressures on young women to conform to ‘perfection’ as dictated by fashion and fitness feeds, and glossing over the body confidence turmoil that is evoked behind the filters.
Recently, social influencers – including Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid – have come under fire legally for their part to play in the disastrous Fyre Festival, and many are calling for public personalities to take responsibility for the huge sway they have over fans.
But, whether you like it or not, it looks like the phenomenon of the social media model is here to stay.
Let’s just hope more women who have chosen this career path are as candid as Imre.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.