Casey Gilfillan

In my most true-to-self form, I have always been a hater towards the idea of a “clean girl” and her aesthetic. I am doubtful of most new trends – this doubt only emboldened upon seeing the masses on social media fully submit and radically alter themselves based on faux philosophy. I tend to be cynical, and am especially so when I find these trends to be immersed in superficial notions of self-care and characterized by capitalistic investment.

The “clean girl” aesthetic requires an attentiveness to self-maintenance that is central; it is depicted as a form of “self-care” but is extremely stylized in the way of having strict stipulations for appearance, consumption, and quality. These values will dictate your well-being more than your general enjoyment of life; these values will bring you more happiness than any free expression of self. These “values,” which are generously called values and are more accurately described as style-guidelines, are alleged to help the follower achieve a very specific image of perfection. These guidelines dictate how you should be living your life, as though actualization begets morality, as though one might be empowered through submission to a collectively shared homogeneity. They inform you as to how you should be eating, what high-end retinol creams you should be putting on your face and how often, how and when you should be exercising, what kind of clothes you should wear, how much and what makeup to wear, how many daily supplements you should be taking, how specifically you should style your hair – only if you want to look clean, that is. This lifestyle trend is unique in its obsession with internal wellness as a function of appearance, and appears to be superficial upon cursory analysis. While it does not shout out any particular ideology, the aesthetic’s focus on women, control of appearance, and body-type exclusivity all sound as dog whistles for growing conservatism and fascist social trends.

I’ve seen the videos, and I’m sure many others have. The Pinterest boards, the collages – how to be a clean girl, how to master the clean girl aesthetic. Listing or picturing loads of beauty products you just have to buy, dull t-shirts and blue jeans to help reset and refresh your wardrobe to a “clean” state, gold-plated jewelry for wealth-signifying accents, light blushes and lip glosses to serve as the basis for your natural look, body inspo of skinny white girls with their hip or collar bones jutting out, pink ribbons in their blonde hair, all set to an off-white and beige color scheme. The Tiktoks of women and girls telling you how to dim down your wardrobe, advertising the “perfect pilates routine” to help you tone without getting too muscular, showing approved hairstyles (straight or slick back only!), touching on the importance of smelling nice, lecturing you on the dangers in over-application of makeup but ensuring that you definitely highlight your cheek bones. They lecture on as they slather and spray and pat product all over their faces, vigorously in routine with hands that never stop capping bottles while the fingers reach out to grab another. They yearn to preserve the skin and youth, they ritualize and beat their bodies into submission. They drown themselves in collagen and exfoliating creams and castor oils, telling you they “swear by this mouthwash,” that the “real girlies know this cleanser is to die for.” 

You must buy these products and follow this routine if you wish to have even the slightest chance at attaining this state of being. You must forgo individuality in light of achieving something superior, something empowered. Somewhere in this compulsive abnegation of self, what started as a genuine pursuit for self-care has turned into a perpetuation of an elitist culture. The cost threshold for entry into this aesthetic is quite significant, inaccessible to the average person, and so it is heavily peddled by influencers selling their flawless bodies and idealized, affluent lifestyles. The rest of us have to hope that one day we will have the funds to support a luxury self-care regimen, that we might one day make enough money to be “clean.” 

Because this is an aesthetic trend that speaks so intimately to women – luring them slowly from their self-expression into a paradigm of control, strict regimen, and uniformity – I feel even more strongly in opposition to the growing wave of partakers. Largely speaking, men do not care to achieve “cleanliness” as a perceptible aesthetic – they might aspire for general hygiene, but that is not even the case, overarchingly. To be perceived as “clean” as opposed to being perceived as hygienically well-kept draws a significant distinction, at least within our current cultural context. The “clean” aesthetic is about more than not appearing dirty with unbrushed hair or bad breath, it is about this illustrious, impossible image of “perfection” through constant, unseen effort and work unto the self. The self is a project of perfection and this notion of “perfection” is prophesied with a pretty particular demographic in mind. This clean girl ”perfection” is an unachievable state. This idealized image is a goal post that will forever be moved, whether due to changing relevancy of products, or your own mortality catching up to capitalistic security blankets.

More than a beacon of self-care and internal wellness, this aesthetic serves as yet another outlet of encouraged self-objectification and self-alienation for women. As their lives revolve exclusively on the upkeep of the physical and youthful aspects of their bodies, their finances heavily investing in services that further support these endeavors, women are increasingly separated from themselves and are subsequently unified with the task of keeping themselves. They keep themselves in order to attain a specific image – the thinner, whiter, blonder, the better – while excluding the others who do not subscribe to this wellness cult. The others – the “unclean,” by implication anyway.

Why “Clean?”

What about this particular lifestyle and aesthetic are “clean?” Sure, alongside the self-maintenance guidelines lies one pertaining to dietary consumption with approved foods, recommended recipes and supplements. In this regard, one can definitely eat “clean,” but the diet is not the core element to this aesthetic, albeit an important part per the headlining influencers. So again I must ask, what exactly makes one “clean” for slicking one’s hair back with expensive oils, for lathering one’s face with high-end, chemically-infused creams, for taking man-made supplements rather than eating a naturally-cultivated diet with the correct balance of nutrients? How simple outfits and neutral tones, asphyxiating purge of individuality, and following a borrowed, generalized code renders them “clean” rather than cultish or banal, I cannot accept. Is it the demographic, the limited purview of bodies that this aesthetic seeks to occupy, that make the aesthetic itself and those who live it “clean?” One scroll under the hashtag, one search of the key terms will bring up content that displays evidence of this; the bodies that promote this lifestyle, those that gatekeep and dictate the rules for entry all share similar traits. It must be the whiteness, the slimness, the blondness, the wealth and elitism, combined with a narrowly cultivated and approved lifestyle; this is the key to social “cleanliness” that this aesthetic promotes and fascists have wet dreams about.