With the rise of a constant trend of self-improvement, “glow-up” culture has become strongly prominent on media platforms. The “SEC effect” trend has skyrocketed on social media, turning college football culture into a beauty trend, but also illustrating the sad truth of women never quite being enough for society.
The term is commonly used to describe the polished, highly-styled aesthetic associated with students at universities in the Southeastern Conference, or SEC. The look? Perfectly bronzed makeup, game day dresses, boutique fashion, a fresh blowout and a full-glam appearance.
On TikTok, the trend has become a running joke. Media users post videos about their supposed “glow-up” after entering an SEC college environment, while users post their schools to be perceived as the high-energy Greek life that goes along with the classic SEC chic aesthetic.
Amid Southern culture, the classic “SEC couple” meme persists. For a football game, a woman looks like she’s dressed for a red-carpet event, while her boyfriend looks like a typical college football fan in a jersey and baseball cap with foreshadowing of early balding and a Bud Light addiction. The SEC environment has numerous forms of misogyny, all centered around a common theme of the high expectations for women.
Past the fake leather Amazon boots and hair rollers, there is a pedestal for women. These unreachable beauty standards have been repeated billions of times with lifelong friends at sleepovers or even with a stranger you met in line at your local coffee shop. The idea that nothing is ever enough for the hungry world we live in. Even the producers of life can’t get a break and have a bad hair day before getting flamed by a random peer, family member or booming comment section. Women simply aren’t allowed to slip or to have a flyaway. So, for the SEC university aesthetic, if you don’t have an endless bank account and a tanning membership, there’s the door.
But who created that system? A society that values 18-year-old women to remain the same size as they were when they were 10 and have an unexplainable “glow” to them.
The trend may seem harmless, and the “SEC effect” itself simply isn’t real, but the pressure placed on women to look a specific way certainly is.
Women have fought for generations to be respected in spaces where they have historically been treated differently. Whether it is in a corporate office, a male-dominated career or even a local bar, women have often had to navigate expectations that extend far beyond their abilities or accomplishments. These expectations are evident in our current college-aged females. From the expectation to be prettier than the girl to your right, to have tanned skin or have an effortlessly sexy vibe to them, the SEC is not for the weak.
There’s a culture where women are expected to be everything at once: polite but confident, beautiful but effortless, successful but approachable, thin but healthy and polished without appearing to try too hard. The “SEC effect” is just another version of those expectations.
The designer clothing and carefully styled appearance portrayed online can make one specific version of femininity seem like the standard. With fresh icy blonde hair and a triple zero waist, the “ideal woman” becomes a concept many women chase.
Social media can make that standard feel even more attainable, and therefore more expected.
TikTok users may be joking when they post about suddenly adopting an “SEC look,” but repeated exposure to the same image of what a college woman is supposed to look like can blur the line between a joke and an expectation.
Of course, dressing up for a football game, wearing a favorite outfit or participating in Greek life is not inherently problematic. Women should be able to enjoy fashion, makeup, beauty and femininity however they choose. The problem begins when one version of femininity becomes the version women feel pressured to achieve.
The “SEC effect” may be a catchy phrase born from social media, but the expectations behind it are much older. Women have long been told how they should look, act and present themselves to earn respect.
So maybe the real trend isn’t an “SEC effect” at all, but the constant toxic expectations placed on women day after day. While you scroll social media, seeing influencer after influencer deemed “perfect” in the public eye, don’t conform to what society wants you to change about yourself.
Having eye bags, pale skin and a bad hair day doesn’t mean you aren’t beautiful, even by the toxic standards the SEC culture presents. Being perfectly authentic, remaining unique and allowing our differences make us most attractive. Together, we can rewrite what “beautiful” means past the fraud illusion an “SEC effect” presents.