The Silhouette Challenge began as an effort to encourage body positivity. Participants, most of whom are women, first film themselves fully dressed – very often they do that at a doorway ‑ to a remix of the song ‘Put Your Head on My Shoulder’ by Paul Anka.

When the beat drops, the video transitions into a view of the dancer’s silhouette through a red filter. The idea is that the dancers should be unembarrassed to show their real bodies on social media. So participants feel free to dance wearing little clothing to display a sharper silhouette, trusting the red filter to preserve their privacy.

But as the #silhouettechallenge took off, some clever people not too high on ethics discovered that by fiddling with traditional image/video editing adjustments such as colour, saturation, contrast, and brightness, the red filter could be reduced or eliminated. It meant that the bodies of the dancers were fully exposed.

Several videos on YouTube went viral with instructions on how to edit the #silhouettechallenge videos and reveal the actual video by removing the red filter. A search on YouTube will show hundreds of videos on how to minimise or fully suppress the effect of the red filter, without permission of course.

So a campaign for body positivity now has women being very careful before participating in it! Not very positive!