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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jess Cartner-Morley

The camera never lies … What BeReal selfies have taught me about my fashion choices

Photographer: Tom J Johnson/The Guardian. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson
Photographer: Tom J Johnson. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson Photograph: Tom J. Johnson/The Guardian

The social media platform BeReal, in which users take a photo during a random two-minute period every day, is not an obvious place to look for style inspiration. Unlike Instagram, which is full of selfies taken specifically to show off a new coat, a good hair day or a flattering lift mirror, BeReal shows everyone at their most humdrum. If Instagram is a glossy, coffee table book compilation of high days and holidays, Be Real is a blooper reel of life’s tea-bath-bed days.

If you are on the app, you get a notification to take a picture of what you are doing at a random time of day – and the reverse camera snaps a selfie while you are doing it. It means you are much more likely to be in the park in your dog-walking coat or sitting at your laptop in an old hoodie than you are to be dolled up.

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