Instagram star Madalin Giorgetta posts a lot of selfies of her tight abs and toned legs. And when she’s not exercising or snapping photos, the fitness blogger cruises through other bloggers’ feeds, looking at their body shots. But when she realized seeing other people’s “perfect” photos was negatively impacting her own body image, she decided to show her followers that selfies are not always what they seem. Watch the video above to see the secrets to her transformation!
On February 16, the Perth, Australia, blogger, who works as a social media consultant and marketer, posted the first in a series of side-by-side photos that illustrated how a couple of simple posture and flexing tricks could completely change the way her body appears in a photo.
“30 second transformation. I don’t look like either in real life,” she captioned the two shots. “In real life I’m not flexing like on the right and I’m not pushing my hips forwards like in the left. Real life isn’t what you see on Instagram peeps. In real life I’m demanding cuddles off my boyfriend, I’m chasing my cat around the house.”
After some commenters questioned whether the two images were Photoshopped, the 28-year-old posted a video that demonstrates exactly how she moved her hips and flexed her legs to transform the appearance of her body.
“No, it’s called the human body and it moves in and out because I’m not a statue,” she wrote with the video, which has gotten more than 293,000 views since she posted it March 2.
The blogger told Us Weekly that she decided to share the secrets with her 213,000 followers on Instagram so that they realize she doesn’t always look perfect in real life.
“I was starting to develop a really unhealthy body image based on all the Instagram pictures that I was seeing on my feed of other women’s bodies, and then I started to realize that maybe my followers felt bad about their bodies based on seeing my pictures, and that is the last thing that I want,” she tells Us. “We use filters and lighting and this is not real life, so I wanted to show that on my Instagram feed.”
Giorgetta says she has received a pretty positive response so far. “I think this is important for women to see,” she tells Us. “I hope that it makes them feel a little more normal and maybe happier with their bodies.”
