Who is “That Girl”?
Back in 2020, when everybody was stuck in quarantine, a sweeping trend resurfaced and conquered millions of for-you pages on social media platforms such as Tiktok, Youtube, and Instagram. Yes, everybody knows “That Girl”. All influencers desperately tried to become her. She wakes up at 5 am every day to meditate and does yoga, only drinks green smoothies and eats salads. She has a luxurious 10-step skincare routine, gets things done and plans ahead. “That Girl” is simply successful and perfect.
But what differentiated this trend from other Pinterest aesthetics and made its popularity so lasting? Many content creators stressed how being “That Girl” isn’t just being pretty, it’s about becoming the best version of yourself by incorporating habits and routines into your daily life, therefore it’s not merely an aesthetic, it’s a lifestyle. During quarantine, we started to invest more time into our well-beings, and so it was the perfect breather for those self-employed successful influencers to gift this trend a deeper meaning and inspire the stuck-home ordinary peeps.
What’s wrong with “her”?
Because being “That Girl” is all about manifesting your own success, so whatever you want will come naturally when you become “her”. What can possibly be wrong with that? Well, I will focus on the 2 main problems that I discovered after scrolling through tons of “That Girl” content and doing my research.
Firstly, even though everyone talks about how we can adapt “That Girl” habits and routines according to our liking, I realized that even though millions of videos were made under this trend, all of them kind of look the same. They are all mostly made by white, thin, privileged women, who have enough time and money to create aesthetically pleasing content. I feel like this reflects the mainstream definition of “success” nowadays, which is solely based on your financial abilities. Just like hustle culture, it overlooks the complexity of daily life and praises the ideal that states hard work can, and definitely will, lead to a successful life. But often, that’s not the case. We have to understand that all of us have different backgrounds, cultures, and starting points. Our experiences shaped us into different human beings, and that individuality shouldn’t be shadowed by the standards that society tries to force on us.
Secondly, surrounding ourselves with “That Girl” content can lead to comparison and unneeded guilt when being unproductive. In reality, the videos that we see are unrealistic. Their lives are far more different than what’s shown on social media, and that’s okay. But it’s easy for us as consumers to become easily swayed and assume that everyone else around us is flourishing except ourselves, thus developing anxiety and self-doubt. At the same time, we will want to spend more money on unnecessary items just so that we can relate a little bit more to those content.
What can WE do about it?
We need to keep in mind that being the best version of ourselves can come in many different ways, and we shouldn’t be trapped within the norms of “That Girl” content. We can take what benefits us from trends like this, but more importantly, we should know that our unique selves shine the brightest when we are doing what works for us, not anyone else, even “That Girl”.
— Writer Sybel Zou can be reached at syberryjam@gmail.com. Follow her on instagram @sssyy_bel.
— Editor Yu (Lulu) Juan can be reached at juanyu.lulu@gmail.com. Follow her on instagram @juanyu.lulu.
