Social media is always redefining what women should be, from “Cool Girls” to “It Girls”, and it’s exhausting.
Scrolling through TikTok, it feels like there’s always a new trend telling women who to be. One week, it’s how to do your makeup like a Clean Girl, the Hailey Bieber type. The next, its effortlessly wild party It Girl aesthetic like Alix Earle. Then the Nara Smith Trad Wife aesthetic, the “girlboss” career woman, the quirky girl, and the “not like the other girls”.
All these identities promise something: a means of being aspirational, down to earth, or desirable. But underneath all these new girl aesthetics, women have always heard the same message– to fit in and be accepted, we must define ourselves.
The Cool Girl trope has been around for decades. She’s the girl who eats burgers, drinks beer, loves sports, and “hangs out with the guys”. On the outside, she’s nonchalant, or at least she’s supposed to be. In Gone Girl, Amy Dunne famously broke down this ideal, exposing how women are expected to perform perfection to be loved.
The Cool Girl of the 2010s isn’t the same as the one we see now on TikTok, but the core hasn’t changed. The version we see today is still nonchalant, always styled, and always casual without trying too hard. What we see on social media is just a curated image that has been made to get us to buy products or follow a certain lifestyle. These lifestyles assure us that if we follow these trends, we’ll be authentic but, in reality, they’re mostly unattainable and unrealistic.
It seems like we trade impossible standards and lifestyles for another every few months. Nara Smith, Alix Earle, and Alex Consani are all considered “It Girls”, but they all represent different aesthetics.
Alix Earle started as the relatable college student that shared Get Ready with Me’s. Now she’s everywhere in the mainstream media, and front row at fashion week. Alex Consani is a supermodel. She travels the world, walks for high end brands like Dsquared, Chanel, Burberry, and Victoria Secret. But she’s so likable because of her social media presence. Her humor makes her feel down to earth. Nara Smith, meanwhile, is also a model but her social media brand is more family centered. She makes bread from scratch and just has a soft family-oriented femininity.
All these women have been charismatic and entertaining to follow. But they also promote unattainable lives that we still want to replicate. So, we buy and follow what they promote just to feel a little bit more like them.
The question we must ask ourselves: Why do we want to be like these women? Why can’t we just be ourselves? Why do we have to define ourselves at all? Is it a choice or because it’s what is expected from us by society?
Men aren’t expected to label themselves into what kind of man they are to be taken seriously. Yes, there are labels for men. Like “Gym Bro”, “The Finance Guys”, “The Alpha Males”, but they don’t need to be defined by any of these characteristics to just exist. On the other hand, women are constantly asked to define what kind of women we are. As if just existing with no brand is not an option.
These labels really seem to confine us into just one role. With social media in the mix, it makes us hyperaware of what we wear, say, and post. We must appeal to others before we can make sense of ourselves.
Women don’t fit into categories. We can be cool girls, girly girls, career women, or none of the above. The only label we should care about is being real and authentic to ourselves.
So, the next time we feel down about how we don’t have the same lifestyle of the women we see on the internet or tv. We need to remember that it’s better to just be a person, and there doesn’t need to be a brand or aesthetic to define you.