The black-and-white challenge

If you use social media specially Instagram, you might be aware about “the black-and-white” challenge. It has been almost a week since this challenge started, in this women post a black and white picture of themselves with the hashtag “challengeaccepted” or “womensupportingwomen” and nominating other womens to do the same. Many women took part in this including various celebrities. The hashtag “challengeaccepted” has been used for more than 5M times on Instagram.

This challenge has several theories. The earliest photo was by Ana Paula Padrao, a Brazilian jouranlist, she posted a photo on Instagram with the hashtag “women supporting women”. Later it was found that this challenge is connected to the Turkish femicide, hundreds and thousands of women are killed across the country.

Turkey has a history of domestic violence against women. The murder rate of women between 2002-2009 had a rapid increase of 1,400 percent. Women are treated brutally in Turkey and are considered inferior. Recently, in Turkey, a 27-year-old student Pinar Gultekin was murdered by her former husband. The woman was strangled and beaten to death by the man. Afterwards he tried burning her corpse, when he failed he threw the body in a dumpster and filled it with concrete. Later, the police said that this act was out of jealousy.

Although some say that this did not originate from Turkey, it originated from US.Wherever it originated from, it doesn’t take away the idea and motive behind this. Many celebrities have taken part in this such as Eliza Jane, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox ,Sonal Devraj, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif etc. The photos are accompanied by a caption about women empowerment and respect for women.

There are many criticizers of this challenge. They have used Twitter to criticize it, saying that posting a picture doesn’t solve the problem. This is not the first time the hashtag “challenge accepted” has trended. It came from time to time, different motive but same idea, i.e. to spread awareness. This challenge is all over the internet, let’s see how far it goes.