When I initial joined Instagram in 2011, it seemed like every person posted horribly edited photographs of their Do it yourself manicures and toilet mirror selfies total with duck lips. It was a serious and candid, albeit a tiny chaotic, representation of our lives. Then arrived the change to a far more curated social media presence, and we all began caring a whole lot extra about what folks on the online considered of us. For the following several several years, people today downloaded the FaceTune app and started sliding still left and ideal on filters to assure they appeared their absolute very best. It speedily became exhausting, but then TikTok entered the scene, offering speedy 15- to 30-second video clips that ended up refreshingly reduced funds and entertaining.
At initial, the articles was as in the same way genuine as the early times of Instagram — complete of amateur makeup tutorials, Diy jobs, and botched haircuts — but in just the final yr, I commenced to detect a distinctive form of content material on my For You Webpage. Several of the natural films have been replaced with clips from microinfluencers exhibiting off their aesthetically pleasing lavatory vanities or their extremely associated and seemingly difficult 12-move early morning routines — and just like that, the “that woman” aesthetic was born.
It’s difficult to determine specifically what it indicates to be “that woman,” but she is serene and neat, constantly wakes up smiling, vlogs her daily meditation apply and two-miles-prolonged walks, and spends an hour on her skin treatment as a self-treatment exercise — and you undoubtedly want to be her. A swift search of the phrase “that lady” on TikTok makes hundreds of identical films that, at the time of composing, have 3.5 billion sights.
The pattern is supposed to be aspirational and motivating, but I have combined inner thoughts about the “that woman” aesthetic. On just one hand, I observe quite a several creators who make this kind of articles and locate myself gravitating towards it just about every time I open up the app — I just hold scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. The videos are engaging and downright wonderful to view. On the other, I never know if our collective obsession with it is a superior matter. When I appreciate the sentiment — that we really should be prioritizing ourselves, pouring unlimited time into our very well-becoming, and striving to turn into the most effective variation of ourselves — I also imagine the development is far more harmful than we know.
I might like to consider the intention guiding these video clips is to clearly show viewers that everyone can be “that female” — which in some cases consists of an audio soundbite from an August 2021 E! News job interview with Rihanna stating to fake it till you make it — but that messaging is drowned out by 1000’s of movies perpetuating an unrealistic conventional with terrific pores and skin, garments, and work-existence harmony to boot. The sheer range of videos with this related messaging can make you really feel like you are the only individual who just isn’t already “that lady.”
To me, the “that girl” aesthetic on TikTok feels a little bit like all those overly edited pictures we all employed to submit on Instagram. We loved searching at them in the minute, but turns out all these several years later on, they were not all that excellent for our mental well being. What’s even stickier about these overly place-together, I-woke-up-like-this kinds of films on TikTok is that it can be even more durable to inform what is actually actual and what is not. Because it really is a video clip, your thoughts reads it as becoming an exact representation of what is staying proven — their skin is generally that crystal clear, their hair always appears that ideal, their self-treatment plan is normally that detailed — when seriously, we’re still only looking at what the creator wishes us to see.
I will not feel the “that female” trend wants to vanish completely — as I stated, I delight in seeing the films, way too — but I do imagine they need to be taken, or seen, with a grain of salt. It is Ok if you don’t truly feel like “that lady” most of the time, it really is Ok if you really don’t wake up wanting video clip-prepared the next you open your eyes, and it can be Alright if all you can muster up the energy for in the morning is working a brush by means of your hair. The truth is, you happen to be currently carrying out just fantastic.
Impression Supply: POPSUGAR Photography / Matthew Kelly
