Get snapping for Unsplash's Girls vs. Stereotypes photographic competition

Beauty Bible often sources photographs to illustrate our features from the online picture library Unsplash. We love their fresh imagery and the way they show ‘real people’.

So we thought we’d share their photo shout-out, Girls vs. Stereotypes, which runs until 15th September and is calling for contributors who’ll share photos of real, confident girls. We can’t put it better than Unsplash themselves, in terms of why they’re doing this – so here goes.

‘Fact: 7 out of 10 girls feel they are treated with less respect because they are a girl. [Source: Source: Plan survey of 1,000 young people, published in 2018.]

Fact: The search results for ‘girl’ across the internet paint a very inaccurate and harmful picture of what a ‘girl’ should look like. With the current studies about the children’s mental health crisis and recent revelations about social media’s impact on girls, this should come as no surprise. These often overly-glamourised and overly-sexualised images don’t help this stigma and create low-self esteem in girls. A key issue is the lack of visual representation for girls of different races/ethnicities, body sizes, and “able-bodiedness”.

As a community, we can take action to change this. We can challenge the stereotypes, replace the labels with real people, and let girls tell us who they really are.

Visuals often influence how stereotypes are shaped and dismantled. Using the viral power of the Unsplash community, we can collectively shape the images the rest of the world sees in the media.

This is why we are partnering with Plan International USA, a long-standing girls’ rights organisation, and joining their We Are the Girls campaign which brings girls and supporters together to champion gender equality and better representation around the world. We are inviting our community to join in!

Let’s replace the stereotypes with diverse, powerful, girl-approved imagery.’ (All photos will be ‘approved’ by girls of the relevant ages.’

Here’s how:

• Head over to the Girls vs. Stereotypes Topic on Unsplash

• Hit the ‘Submit to Girls vs. Stereotypes’ button

• Submit any photos you’ve shot that meet Unsplash’s Submission Guidelines (here)

The top 10 images, as chosen by Unsplash’s panel of girls, will then be featured on their blog and social channels and shared with leading publications on International Day of the Girl. And moving forward, Unsplash tell us: ‘In addition to encouraging more diverse submissions, to combat the societal biases that AI perpetuates in Search, Unsplash is making some tweaks to its algorithm by adding diversity tags to the accepted images which will feature more inclusive photos at the top of Search. Because when you change the algorithm, you change people’s perceptions of what girls can and should look like.

We say: get clicking – and use the list Unsplash have come up with, below, for inspiration…