Model loses thousands of followers after she shares "real life" Instagram pics.

Seems like Instragram users don’t like real life after all.

Stina Sanders social media accounts are filled with your typical range of  Instagram snaps.

Bathroom mirror selfies, pouty made up poses,  pool side bikini selfies, and the obligatory latte pics, green smoothie shots and yoga poses.

Her following was growing with more than 13,000 people in her Instagram fan family.

But after Australian teenager Essena O’Neill made the viral announcement she was quitting social media U.K. based model Stina Sanders took on a challenge of her own.

She decided to post unfiltered – and sometimes unflattering – photos on her Instagram account for a week.

“I wanted to see what would actually happen if I stopped posting glamorous photos, and shared stuff that you wouldn’t normally even share with your friends, stuff that is taboo, stuff that was quite crude, all that kind of stuff,” the 24-year old model told People Magazine.

“Personally I think Instagram is so fake – the amount of filters, the airbrushing – so I thought it would be interesting.”

She began posting  away to see how her followers would react.

There were pictures of hair removal:

Sweaty gym feet in need of a pedicure:

And even a selfie before a colonic irrigation:

The model, who told The Tab she “travels all over the world to pout” only expected her likes on individual photos to go down, but she was shocked to lose followers. More than 3,000 of them.

She told The Tab “The hair-defuzzing and colonic irrigation is something that I knew would either be deemed as really cringeworthy, but it’s not exactly something people can deny that they don’t do.

“We all poo and have unwanted body hair. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t!”

She says she never expected the reaction.

“I honestly thought that my followers would remain the same but my likes would reduce, but the complete opposite happened.

“Girls started commenting more on my images because they could relate, but men barely commented at all.”

Stina Sanders thanks her fans for voting for her in an online competition.

“Women were commenting because they could relate,” she says.

“For example, on the hair removal cream photo of mine, one girl said, ‘I do my morning maintenance every Monday too.’ People were pleased that they could actually see it’s okay to be normal.”

Stina Sanders who previously has spoken of her 18-month long struggle to escape  domestic violence situation used the forum to open up about her struggle with anxiety.

“So many people suffer – celebrities and just every day people – it’s silly that only recently, as a society, we’ve only just recognised the importance of understanding mental illness and the issues that it brings.”

In June she explained the crunch point that brought her to leave her controlling partner who abused her after she did a shoot for underwear company Ultimo.

“He opened my laptop to look at the pictures, as if he was rubbing my nose in the mess I’d made. I said the photos were ‘hardly distasteful’, but this struck a nerve with Adam. He broke my laptop in two, kicking my screen and keyboard across the floor. I yelped as it skidded across the floor – it had all my uni work on it (thank god for hard drives). But before I could speak, he grabbed my hair and dragged me around his apartment.”

“I can still feel the sharp pain of each strand of hair being stretched. He then pressed himself against me and began to strangle me. After what felt like hours I managed to kick him off me and ran to the bathroom, locked the door and hid. After an hour Adam had fallen asleep. I quietly escaped, spent the night in a hotel and told myself I had to leave him.

She says that at this point she didn’t leave instead staying for a further year and a half.

“He’d knocked my confidence so low that I just couldn’t imagine what I’d do without him.”

Finally after she heard he had been cheating on her she gathered the strength to leave. She wrote a piece on her blog imploring fellow sufferers to get help.

“If you are a victim of abuse, please know that it’s never your fault, nor should you feel embarrassed by it. Talk to as many people as you can and get support. I promise you that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Six months on Stina has established herself as a prominent blogger and model – one now keen to continue her “real life” images.

On losing her followers Stina says that maybe her real life was too much for them “It’s that kind of ‘I didn’t sign up for this’ attitude.”

Like Essana O’Neil Stina Saunders says she finds Instagram to be a potentially dangerous place for young women who feel they need to keep up.

“I think Insta-fame is a bit ridiculous if I’m honest. It fuels young minds to feel that they’re not doing well because they’re not driving the latest Range Rover or wearing a Rolex – but they’re only 16.”

She says she found taking the “ugly selfies”( as she calls them) empowering.

It’s so important to just be real… “I can’t speak for everyone on Instagram, but I can guarantee that the majority of images that you see will have been edited one way or another.”

One side effect of Stina going public is that since speaking to the media her Instagram following has now increased again – back up 4000 extra followers all looking forward to a slice of “real life.”