Authentic Instagram: Account Portrays the Real Life Women Live Outside of Social Media

Ever wonder why your boyfriend is so surprised to discover that you sometimes forget go the whole of winter without shaving your legs?

It could be that he’s never lived with a female before. Or it could be that he – like every human being who has ever used social media to communicate with another human being – simply finds the reality behind your Instagram profile a little different to the one that’s bristling up against him under the covers.

And it’s not a bad thing. It’s just a little different from the #world we are, more often that not, happier to show a much more polished version of our lives – like, say, endless pictures of our feet on brightly tiled mosaic floors, or a smiling post gym selfie, complete with a worryingly radioactive green wheat grass smoothie.

Well, Sally Nixon, an illustrator from Arkansas, is not afraid to show the less social media-friendly side of female life. Which is just as well for anyone following her on Instagram – sallustration – which shows what women do when they’ve put down their cell, taken their dinner out of a box, and are most definitely not about to photograph it from a height, filtered beyond all recognition.

In a new series of illustrations, Sally has drawn women eating cheese puffs, not getting a moment’s peace from our pets while we’re on the toilet, and cleaning our teeth in the shower without even the faintest whiff of a thigh gap.

And it’s marvellous. Looking through the keyhole into the lives of these females doing ordinary things, without judgement or vanity, is like watching Hannah in Girls season one with the volume turned off (and without people getting mad about Lena Dunham being naked quite so much).

Speaking to the Creator’s Project at Vice, Nixon said, “They don’t have perfect bodies or perfect habits and that makes them relatable. The scenes I create around them are everyday places: a bathroom, a restaurant, a messy bedroom. However, my goal with each drawing is to elevate the seemingly mundane to something special and worthy of being viewed.”

On the bio section on her site, Sally Nixon identifies just what it is her subject matter that intrigues her.

“She loves drawing girls because they’re pretty and food because it’s the best.”

Well, we can’t argue with that.