In 2018, at 14 years old, all I wanted was to glow up. Six years later, glow-up culture was a trap no one knew was set.
Even one of the biggest glow-up creators, Alivia D’Andrea, agrees. In her most recent YouTube video, “How Glowing Up Ruined My Life,” D’Andrea proclaims that her six-year glow-up journey has been a misguided pursuit.
At 14, I thought the perfect life was built by crunches, lemon water, and face masks. The late 2010s internet, still controlled by millennials, warped what it meant to be successful. How you manicured your looks and the meticulous habits you practiced determined your worth. Consumed by this message, I began associating glowing up with growing up. I constantly thought my life would be figured out if I could just have the eleven-line abs and clear skin of a 24 year old. I was really wishing for not to be 14 years old, facing a four-year sentence in the awkward phase. If I could glow up– no longer have hormonal acne, greasy hair, and unflattering glasses– I would be successful. I would be who I wanted to be, and who I wanted to be was someone older.
Alivia D’Andrea’s Glow up diaries
Coinciding with my descent into the glow-up trap, an 18-year-old D’Andrea began her Glow Up Diaries series on YouTube. D’Andrea’s story differed drastically from the rest of the internet, and the first episode’s 8.5 million views confirm its relatability. She exposed the ugliness that precedes glowing up and, in her case, pervades it. From the beginning, D’Andrea was upfront that her glow-up story would not be as simple as others. She documented the realities of severe acne, weight gain, and binge eating tangled up with self-loathing.
Even though I resonated with D’Andrea’s struggles, I could see the holes in her plan while stepping over the ones in my own.
Her videos were released months after they had been filmed and veiled with a seemingly retrospective narration. D’Andrea projected that she had found the key to glowing up in the months that separated filming and releasing, but then, in the following videos, it was clear she had not grown in the months that separated them. She covered her lack of development with comforting statistics, motivational quotes, and falsified confidence.
Video after video, her followers saw her fall back into old habits, opposing the rest of the internet, where glowing up was achieved in ten minutes or less. During her many online disappearances, it was speculated that she had failed entirely and given up. These comments surmounted, and D’Andrea delayed episodes until she had finally glowed up.
And she did, or so we thought.
No One questions a glow up
After seven months offline, D’Andrea uploaded what seemed to be the finale of the Glow Up Diaries titled “How I lost 32 pounds of Fat and 10 inches off my waist”. It’s not a mistake that she didn’t attach the series name to the video because she, in fact, did not glow up. She thought she had changed because she looked different. She had finally lost weight. While she had a different exterior, a crack formed under the surface.
Her story has always been a journey to self-acceptance disguised as a glow-up. What she didn’t know, and what many young viewers, including myself, didn’t know, was that she needed to accept herself before attempting to glow up. She needed to be secure to secure her change.
She lost her external success because, under pressure, that crack gave way. Initially, to glow up, D’Andrea decided she wanted to destroy the current version of herself. The trouble with this mindset is that she constantly worried that she would slip up, return to old habits, and eventually be the same person she started as.
In her recent return to YouTube, D’Andrea shares what she learned after six years of attempting to glow up: it was impossible to expect to unlock a trap whose key you have swallowed.
You become who have always wanted to be
For all those who fell victim to the glow-up frenzies of the late 2010s, forgive your younger self. She was too young to know that her problems ran skin deep and couldn’t be rubbed off with a body scrub. Tell her she will become who she always wanted to be, but she didn’t become her in spite of who she is now. It takes time to learn how to live, and knowledge is unfortunately not gifted to 14-year-olds.
At the end of her first episode of the Glow Up Diaries, D’Andrea writes, “You owe it to yourself to become everything you have ever dreamed of.” D’Andrea and I are the best versions of ourselves, but only after realizing that we always were, even at 18 and at 14.