Picture perfect?
RILEY CHERVINSKI/ARTS COLUMNIST
So you posted a pic of the new yoga pose you finally perfected on your Instagram page. The cropped square photo shows your toned legs balance easily in the air as the sun rests low in the evening sky.
As the double-taps and heart-eyed emojis start pouring in, it occurs to you that maybe you should’ve shown the whole story. How your sister was holding your legs up just out of the frame. How you have two midterms and three papers due this week but you just spent the last 45 minutes trying to find the best angle to hide your weak chin. How your yoga pants are a size too small and are riding up everywhere they shouldn’t.
What goes on behind-the-scenes of our Instagrams is what interests Larissa May and the other girls behind a new social awareness campaign called #halfthestory. The campaign aims to provide a platform for men and women to share the parts of their identities that are not normally revealed through social media. They hope to liberate people in a society where, according to their website, 1.8 billion photos are uploaded daily and the average person spends 1.72 hours per day on social media.
The campaign works like this: you download a graphic to your phone that says, “#halfthestory,” then you get someone to take a photo of you holding the graphic on your phone. Next, you write the other half of your story in the description and post the photo to Instagram.
Since launching in October, the campaign has almost 500 Instagram followers. Contributors include a young girl who posts a lot of travel photos, but reveals that it’s far from glamorous — she’s choosing to travel now before she takes care of her brother with cerebral palsy. Another photo is of pop singer Louisa Wendorff who admits she was extremely late for a meeting with Apple Music and Beats by Dre while she snapped the pic.
It’s hard to tell yet whether the campaign will bring awareness to our Instagram-obsessed society, but it’s worth a shot. And in case you were wondering, the other half of my story is that I wrote this column three days late while lying in bed wearing food-stained pajamas and daydreaming about not being so broke.
Riley Chervinski is a journalism student, soccer player
and reader of cringe-worthy chick-lit. You can usually find her scrolling
through Tumblr, scoping out recipe blogs or
laughing at her own jokes @rileychervinski.
