Social media has been taken over by these glamour shots, with captions that include the hashtag #ChallengeAccepted, some kind words about women inspiring and supporting each other, and the tagging of other women asking them to take up the ‘challenge’ themselves.
While anyone and everyone has started sharing selfies in a display of solidarity with women, it appeared to first become mainstream when a host of celebrities started tagging each other in the posts.
But where did this viral challenge first start and why did it start?
The origin is unclear. One theory is that it was sparked by protests in Turkey last week over domestic violence and femicide.
According to New York Times journalist Tariro Mzezewa, women in Turkey say it started “as a response to them being frustrated over always seeing black and white photos of women who have been killed”.
https://twitter.com/tariro/status/1288063578130599936
Another theory is that the challenge began chain-letter style with a single WhatsApp message urging people to post the black and white selfies to Instagram and tag other women who share their values.
Others have suggested the challenge stemmed from a similar campaign that went viral in 2016 in a bid to raise cancer awareness.
Although most women don’t know the exact reason behind it, the #ChallengeAccepted hashtag has almost 5 million posts on Instagram.
Those include many from celebrity participants such as Kerry Washington, Eva Longoria and Kristin Bell.
Jennifer Aniston perhaps best captured our feelings about the challenge with her post, in which she admitted “I don’t really understand this #challengeaccepted thing”, before saying “but who doesn’t love a good reason to support women?”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDKzW-HDogh/
