Please note: this article contains images featuring nudity.
Sick of people’s perfect bodies and lives being flaunted in front of their faces, Pip and Lib launched Phlegm, a lifestyle brand dedicated to smashing the “vision of perfection”.
“We were fed up with feeling unworthy and imperfect,” they told The Huffington Post UK.
“So we wanted to create an army of people who were up for destroying perfection. Phlegm is our way of encouraging people to be who they want, not who society tells them to be.”
Pip, 23, takes the photos while Lib, 22, conducts interviews and tells people’s stories.
So far they’ve protested perfectionism at London Fashion Week; have interviewed Joe Shields, a creative from London, about the pressures on men to be brave; and have spoken out about female sexual harassment and revenge porn, a write-up which was accompanied by images of a naked female’s body covered with slabs of meat.
It’s shocking, it’s unusual, but it’s getting the message across about important issues in society.
For Pip and Lib, Phlegm is their effort to “change the world”. They want to protest perfectionism in the media, online and in other aspects of day-to-day life because, at the end of the day, “perfection is an arsehole” - as they so bluntly put it.
“Society has created an idea of perfection, making us hide away the bits that don’t fit in,” they said. “But everybody has flaws. It’s time to embrace that.”
The duo said one of the biggest issues, for them, is social media, which is a “breeding ground for self-loathing”.
For example, they said, when you sift through Instagram on a daily basis, all you see are the highlight reels of people’s lives, made up of heavily edited photos.
“It’s all well and good but after a 14-hour shift when you have smelly feet and a bad back, comparing your life to a Kardashian isn’t going to end well,” they said.
“There are so many high profile media and celebrities who use their power to portray perfection. It’s bloody worrying.
“When our younger cousins are on there, seeing something airbrushed having millions of likes, we don’t like it. And we both live by the philosophy that rather than sitting here and moaning about it, we will do something to change it.”
The pair are on a quest to take over social media with their message. They’ve even taken to the streets, handing out flyers about Phlegm, and one day hope to release a sassy t-shirt range too. Because, as they put it, “if we don’t say f*ck you now, when will we ever say it?”
Watch this space.