A HAIRDRESSER has persuaded six pals to pose in their underwear in a bid to challenge fashion industry stereotypes.
Emma Diamond, who stripped off herself, wanted to show photographs of normal women’s bodies without any of the enhancement common in the fashion business.
The 24-year-old from Paisley got her brave friends to hold up messages for her No Filter Project such as: “There is no wrong way to have a body.”
Emma, head of the creative team at Uconcept Hair Salon said: “I’ve worked on quite a lot of fashion photoshoots and been meeting a lot of different women all the time.
“I realised how much Photoshop and changing images has to play.
“Bodies have been changed, their shapes have been changed and altered and that’s what we’ve been told is the way to look like.”
She added: “Even on things like Instagram you’re not seeing real representations of people position their bodies to make them look different and use filters to change their shape – images like that make us beat ourselves up about our own bodies.
“Talking to friends – they all have the same insecurities. And just from doing the first shoot with seven of us involved we’ve already seen it change our views of ourselves – it’s had a positive impact – we’re not worrying about what we eat or how we look.”
Emma said she would like to change male opinion about how their bodies should look.
“Men seemed reluctant to do it. They said it was a good idea but when I asked if they wanted to be photographed they said they didn’t want to do it.
“We’d like to target fashion magazines as well to show them the impact their images have on people. There’s so much more to people than the models they photograph.”
One model who took part in the photoshoot, Pauline Clark, 33, from Glasgow, said: “I had such a laugh and it felt really liberating.
“I lay in bed last night and actually cried for all those years of putting myself down, comparing myself to others and just generally being unkind to me.
“It was a release of all those years. I felt “cleansed” in a way. Listening to everyone there in the salon, I realised we all do it and its such a shame. More women should do this.”
Another model, Lesley MacKay, 26, also from Glasgow, said: “I think the culture of ‘thinspiration’ and ‘fitspiration’ is really dangerous and actually has a negative impact.”
