Every morning at 5 am, when the sun is still sleeping and the moon is walking away, she flutters open her eyes. After only 10 seconds of her alarm, she's already stretching her arms, unwrapping herself from the warmth of her slippery silk sheets. She skips in front of the mirror, and smiles back at herself. She doesn’t even think to pinch her cheeks raw to squeeze out her blackheads, or to stand profile for 10 minutes sucking her gut in and out. She brushes her teeth, pearly white, completes a multiple step skincare routine, face sticky from serums and SPF. Then she paints her makeup on, like watercolor to a canvas. Her heat-less curls are sprayed with hairspray, firm but not crispy, then tied neatly into a ponytail. She snaps on a matching workout set, running out the door to get to pilates with a protein bar breakfast in her hand. Clean girl is never late. Clean girl doesn't oversleep either. Clean girl doesn't have pimples, or a fuller midsection, or bad breath, bad manners, bad hair, bad style, bad teeth. She’s perfect! Don’t you want to be clean girl ?
So everyone buys in, selling the lifestyle off as just an aesthetic. With roughly 750 million tiktok views, social media becomes the hub for the army of clean girls, plastering the ‘clean girl aesthetic’ in our faces as we scroll. Picture perfect all the time, oh to have everything! To wake up at 5:00 because someone else said “hot girls” wake up early. To take pilates because it's trending. To buy matching sets in every color because you need to “run not walk” to get your hands on the next viral outfit. So we purchase our chance to fit in and we have our ‘clean girl starter kit’. We drag ourselves out of bed before the sun, slick back our hair, ignoring the faint headache creeping from behind our temples. We buy a membership at the pilates studio and then buy a celery juice on the way home. We’re clean girl now!
But it lasts a week or two, maybe a month. And to our horror, we open up tiktok or instagram to see that clean girl is out and mob wife is in. Or office siren, or eclectic cowgirl, or coastal granddaughter, or rockstar girlfriend, or cigarette cardplayer, or manic hippie, or sleek business woman, or, or, or. Because even the rejection of one aesthetic produces the offspring of another. The lists can go on and on and it will continue to do so as long as 1). people (girls) buy into the idea that they must adhere to whatever style is current and 2). It can be monetized.
Trends are trends are trends, most particularly with fashion. The bright mod looks of the 60s, the denim on denim of the 70s, the shoulder pads of the 80s. But styles that used to last a decade, are now accelerated to maybe a handful of months if we’re lucky. The longevity of trends exhausts the consumer, fast-fashion is called fast for a reason, and puts more money into the pockets of people who could care less. Because girls just want to fit in. And to do so, you need to buy the adhering wardrobe, then ditch it the second it isn’t cool, isn’t trendy, or isn’t what the celebrities are wearing anymore. This fast paced turnover is harmful, hurtful, and hateful and leaves those behind who can’t buy a new wardrobe every time a new ‘viral’ look develops. As the style shifts, you cross your fingers that you have the jeans and the genes that the new trend is catered towards.
But who are we kidding? The ideal girl of today is a mannequin, a clone. Plain, boring, and not too suggestive. Ready to shapeshift into clean girl, or coquette the instant the words are muttered. Ready to shed the old clothes as fast as the new ones are created, ready to beckon the unsuspecting girls, ready to sacrifice all sense of self at the expense of fitting in. To me it reads as a performance, a caricature of an aesthetic to make a profit. But who are we performing for? Who are these looks catered towards? What gaze do we understand them in?
The difference of inspiration and influence is crucial here. Taking inspiration is to incorporate, to be influenced is to covet. Implementing it to your existing self, not erasing what is already you. Using in moderation, not instead of. Full self erasure is a silly use of time. In my opinion, as this whole piece is, the clean girl phenomenon is actually about embracing the undercurrent of individual style, but failing to realize that not everyone needs to praise it. Yes some people really are clean girl, and some people really are coastal granddaughter. But giving it some sort of strange title and marketing it towards people as a necessity, is pushing diversity and individuality towards the brink of extinction.
Swallowing these trends as they arise is suffocating, and as a girl myself it is hard enough to be just that. I’ve learned to admire, not desire. One’s own aesthetic is a conglomeration of all they adore; perhaps the matching set of clean girl, the fur of mob wife, and the bows of the coquette look. And if we consider style a performance, an act of self expression, then we should be our only audience. A one woman show. Executing what we like, a melting pot of all that we enjoy. The only aesthetic that will ever be timeless is one in which you create yourself.
until we meet again
natalie <3
