For those living with chronic illnesses, whether they be mental or physical, celebrating and glorifying doing the bare minimum can be key to survival. The crushing weight of late-stage capitalism coupled with navigating the horrors of adulting, the idea of perfecting your life and documenting it on top of it all is enough to send me crawling back to bed.ĭespite our modern fixation with productivity, we’re not meant to be operating at 100% all of the time. While our culture has moved towards a slower pace of life, I fear that the “that girl” trend has become another way of demanding that we hustle and grind to become the best versions of ourselves at all times rather than honoring the ebb and flow of life.
THAT GIRL TREND PROFESSIONAL
When near professional quality montages of someone’s daily life performs well on social media, granting them attention, and sometimes money, it’s hard not to feel as though you’re not doing something wrong.
The laundry list of tasks that “clean girl” videos present can often make us feel like crap for not doing more. Social media’s unconscious bias aside, to have the luxury of dedicating an hour each morning to cleaning, working out, journaling, meditating and make three home-cooked meals a day is just that – a luxury. Creating an aesthetically pleasing life takes money and energy as it’s infinitely easier to make a coffee pour Instagram-worthy in a beautiful city loft versus a windowless room in an apartment that you share with three other people. There is a reason why most of its protagonists are young, single, white women. Although the videos are meant to be aspirational, the rigorous morning routines are not accessible for those with limited time, energy and resources. While I’m guilty of posting those crisp and clean five second reels, admittedly finding solace and purpose in idealizing my daily life, the “clean girl” trend has proven to be both exhausting and problematic. What first started off as a noble attempt to romanticize everyday habits and mundane tasks has since morphed into a competition of who can appear to be the most put together. Perfectly curated morning routines have become TikTok and Instagram’s latest obsession.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the “that girl” trend and its more recent successor, the “clean girl,” have taken over social media - a viral sensation that initially sprang from the boredom and hypochondriac tendencies that came along with isolation.
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