1 min read

FOREO accepts the #blackandwhitechallenge

August 4, 2020

By: tonkec

A worldwide cause worthy of our - and your - support: let's stop femicide and gender violence. Have you heard about the "Women Supporting Women" social media photo challenge? Right now SM feeds everywhere – especially Instagram – seem to be flooded with millions of black and white selfies and portraits of women of all ages, races, professions, be they celebrities and influencers or not. So what is this trend all about and should you join in?

The story behind the hashtag

The challenge promotes female empowerment, solidarity and positivity — all while raising some very important issues. There are several ideas on who, why and where started the whole trend (Brazil or Turkey?) but the idea is to raise awareness of high rates of femicide and gender violence, primarily in Turkey, but also elsewhere in the world (Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico). The World Health Organization defines the femicide as the "intentional murder of women because they are women." These B&W photos are a reminder of those chilling B&W photos of murdered women shown on SM channels, in newspapers, on TV screens. The message is chilling as well — “if we don’t do anything NOW, this could be us one day”.

Everyone’s joining in

Celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Lopez, Demi Moore, Eva Longoria, Jennifer Garner, Gabrielle Union and Kerry Washington, to mention just a few, have all participated in the challenge with messages of support and love. But, more importantly, millions of photos from women around the globe have already been tagged with the #womensupportingwomen hashtag.

FOREO supports the movement

We at FOREO have always been proudly diverse and vocal about women’s rights and women’s safety, their equality and empowerment. Therefore we decided to join the movement at once, not only because women make about 75% of our workforce, but because we believe that this important message deserves to be heard around the world. Our goal is to make women (and men) everywhere feel empowered, happy and, hence, more beautiful.

You can join in too

The mechanism is quite simple: you share a monochrome photo of yourself and tag/challenge your girlfriends to do the same, using the hashtags #womensupportingwomen, #challengeaccepted and #blackandwhitechallenge.