A Chicago high school student's video project where she captured the reactions of her fellow classmates after she told them they were beautiful has gone viral.
Shea Glover, a student at the Chicago High School for the Arts, posted the video on YouTube in May. In the months since, the video has been seen more than 5 million times.
In the video, Glover stands behind the camera and prepares to take a video of several of her classmates, one at a time. While filming them, she explains the premise of her project, which she says is to film things she finds beautiful. The project was for her integrated arts class with instructors Catarina Araujo and Natalie Chami.
Throughout the process of filming, Glover says it became more of a social experiment than a video project.
“I conducted an independent project, which evidently turned into a social experiment halfway through, regarding beauty at my performing arts high school in Chicago," Glover said in the description of the video on YouTube. "I want to clarify that my intentions were not to get a reaction out of people. I was simply filming beauty and this is the result. Here it is.”
The reactions of Glover's classmates varied. Some were shy and others were visibly flattered. Some appeared to think Glover was lying, despite her assurances that she was not. Most people, however, simply smiled, showing an incredible before-and-after transformation.
