My Problem With The “Clean Girl Aesthetic”
Mini rant incoming...
We all know that one girl who has perfectly glowing skin, never has a hair out of place, always eats perfectly healthy, goes to the gym consistently, and all in all just has her life together. That is the clean girl aesthetic.
The clean girl aesthetic draws inspiration from the “model-off-duty aesthetic” and the “no-makeup-makeup look”.
Celebrities that embody this aesthetic are Bella Hadid, Lori Harvey, and Hailey Bieber.
This trend became popular over a year ago on TikTok. One year ago with TikTok is ancient history, trends come and go so fast on there, so for this one to last this long, it might not be going away anytime soon.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the clean girl aesthetic and I love to exude this aesthetic from time to time.
But there is one problem I have with it.
I do not like that it is used to represent ultra femininity!
Just a few google searches and one YouTube video on how to exude femininity would show you that the “clean girl aesthetic” is currently the face of ultra femininity.
I have always believed that “femininity” is subjective, and that women should not be told how to be women, and I thought that is what the feminist movement is all about.
With trends like the “e-girl aesthetic”, the “VSCO girl aesthetic”, the “soft girl aesthetic” and now the “clean girl aesthetic”.
It puts every woman in a box and gives women a manual on how to be women.
The clean girl aesthetic caters to a particular type of woman and has its own set of beauty standards.
So there have been questions on if the BBL era is coming to an end.
Of course, we are very eager to say goodbye to the unrealistic Kim K body standard, but does the clean girl aesthetic have a more realistic body standard?
The attitude to body image has not changed at all. It’s like “we do not need you to have crazy body proportions, we just need you to look like this”.
You might argue that the body type for the clean girl aesthetic is more achievable than the Kim K body aesthetic.
My argument is “do we always need to have a trend with women’s bodies?”.
Let’s not even talk about the class aspect of the clean girl aesthetic. It could easily be named the rich girl aesthetic.
When you watch videos on how to achieve the clean girl aesthetic, you see them subtly or outrightly putting down the women who chose to rock long colorful nails, full glam makeup, and rock colourful outfits.
How about we just accept that every woman can express herself the way she wants to express herself.
The clean girl aesthetic is just another way of telling women they have to present themselves in a certain way to be respected.
Like I said earlier, there is nothing wrong with these aesthetics, but if you constantly switch up your aesthetic for every trend how about you take time out to discover your aesthetic.
Instead of trying to be respected by being who they say you should be, command respect by being your true authentic self.
