New and Digital #16

No-makeup selfies campaign generates £2m windfall for cancer research

It started with a row at the Oscars, featured the current obsession with "selfies" and rapidly clogged up legions of Facebook streams. Tens of thousands of women, egged on by their friends, shared pictures of themselves without makeup to raise awareness of breast cancer.

By Friday the viral trend had transformed into a fundraising phenomenon, generating a £2m windfall for Cancer Research UK.

The #nomakeupselfies campaign raised the money in just 48 hours, the charity said, with hundreds of thousands of donations from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter users sharing pictures of themselves without makeup and nominating a friend to do the same.

Cancer Research UK said it had not initiated this particular campaign, but was alerted to the #nomakeupselfies trend on Tuesday and began to ask users to add a donation request and text code to their posts. Since then, the money has flooded into the UK charity.

Cancer Research UK's head of social media, Aaron Eccles, said: "We're over the moon. When we do a social media campaign we want to engage as many people as possible, and this has taken off like crazy."

The idea itself appears to have begun last week when American crime author Laura Lippman tweeted a picture of herself without makeup in support of Kim Novak, the 81-year-old actor whose looks had been criticised at the Oscars. The theme was picked up by celebrities and fans of Lippman before spreading more widely.

But for all the unexpected financial success, some commentators question whether it is appropriate or relevant to link the "bravery" of appearing without makeup to the very different challenge of fighting cancer, triggering fierce debates online.

Blogger Yomi Adegoke said: "Thinly veiling vanity as philanthropy more than irks … the pretence these images are for anything other than an onslaught of 'natural beauty' acclamations, coupled with pats on the back for 'fighting the cause' makes the no makeup selfie mania even harder to stomach."

At some point, all the criticism prompted people to remember and then resurrect a previous failed social media campaign – where Cancer Research UK had attempted unsuccessfully to use selfies to raise awareness of breast cancer.