The clean girl in me
Self commodification, internet aesthetics, authenticity, and how Tumblr and TikTok scrambled my brain
During the Christmas of my eighth-grade year, I unwrapped my first pair of white Doc Martens. About a year prior, I became obsessed with owning a pair after seeing the shoes represented online through styling videos and collecting artistic images of the shoes on my Pinterest boards. It was 2013, and “hipster” fashion was reigning supreme. I don’t think I knew then that Doc Martens were seeing one of their peaks in trendiness. All I remember was thinking they were the most obscure, subversive, and coolest thing in the world.
Doc Martens are often advertised and represented as an anti-establishment shoe. This type of shoe is worn by people with a punk quality about them. A Docs wearer is a young, spirited, and lightly rebellious person who is not afraid to bend the rules for fun or adventure. This person may pair the boots with tights and a plaid skirt, their look complimented by a strand or two of vibrantly dyed hair. They might commit a petty crime for the sake of their art or a harmless thrill. They might trespass to capture a really cool photo or climb on an overpass to hang out at night. They would never be caught, and the picture would hit 10,000 notes on Tumblr.
I remember being aware of the term “hipster,” but it being more of a cringeworthy term than something anyone wanted to be associated with. Despite this, many young people on the pulse of culture at the time were engaging with an aesthetic that drew from this subculture. Looking back, in 2013 “hipster” was probably beginning its shift from its status as a subculture to more of a shallow aesthetic. My version of this aesthetic had Doc Martens at the center of it. Upon visualizing and admiring the Doc Martens archetype, I was okay with being ascribed the qualities that went along with it. Even the qualities (and maybe especially the qualities) that were not 100 percent authentic to me. Showing up in the world wearing Doc Martens is like buying social stock in the brand’s associations. You put on the shoes, projecting these values into the world – co-signed as your own personal branding.
Of course, fashion has always been representative and conveyed values and cultural insights beyond the physical items. Fashion represents how people exist and tells stories through an artistic medium that (no matter how hard we try) no one can completely avoid. Everyone has to wear clothes! From skirt lengths changing with the state of the economy to new cuts reflecting changing social values– fashion exists as a force constantly mirroring and reflecting modern life. Doc Martens have a long history parallel to countercultural movements like punk in the 80s and as workwear sported by the working class. But I didn’t know any of this history when my obsession began. I constructed the Doc Martens wearer archetype in my early adolescent mind almost entirely through early internet personalities representing the brand’s qualities through their online content. It wasn’t about the actual history and lineage of the brand but rather what derivative looked the coolest when posed and highly curated.
Looking back, I realize most of the material items I sought out during this time came from online representations of what I considered cool. Beats headphones, Love Spell body spray, and Baby Lips lip balm are all items I projected value onto because of how I saw people interacting with them online.
Even though “influencers” then looked very different than they do today, I was already susceptible to being marketed toward in pursuit of projecting a curated image into the world with my aesthetic taste. As a middle school girl sorting out various aspects of my identity, who better to turn to than the aspirational figures I found online. These internet personas of the people I admired were just out of reach enough for me to never confront if these people were actually worthy role models.
With my concept of the coolest people I knew existing exclusively online, coolness became synonymous with performance. This performance required props and costumes-– the material items aligned with the aesthetic vision.
At 13, my identity became wrapped up in how well I could replicate or represent an abstract association of being the type of person who engages with a certain type of media or does a certain type of action through the items I own. With the help of social media, I incorrectly simplified the qualities I appreciated in others or the appreciation I felt for images and videos to translate into an insatiable need to replicate. Doc Martens were my earliest introduction to the ever-present late capitalist myth that identity is purchasable. It feels hard to imagine an existence where the social capital of coolness (and the materials required to attain it) isn’t a component of my self-esteem.
I don’t think I speak for myself alone when I say I have trouble truly appreciating things without attempting to personify them; maybe that’s why I own 4 pairs of Doc Martens.
The internet looks a lot different now than it did in 2013. Being online at the time felt like something outside the norm of acceptable conversation. The people who knew knew and those who didn’t were left on the fringes to wonder why a few girls were showing up to class wearing clunky combat boots with their leggings. Although the Tumblr-age commodification set the stage for what we see today, back then, fewer of us were living with the less enveloping perceptions of fewer products being identity-makers. Now, we live in an age of the “viral urban outfitters corset” and the “Alix Earle viral going out top.” You can clock these items or ones like them walking around a young part of the city for maybe 5 minutes, or 2 minutes of scrolling on TikTok.
Anyone who has spent time on the girlinternet in the last few years is acutely aware of micro-labeling culture proliferating in the ether. My feeds are filled with commentary deconstructing the components of different niche internet aesthetics. The videos often accompany links to purchase the aesthetic “essentials” or a particularly aesthetically spot-on piece.
Think less of a label like “chic,” a broad, encompassing word that could mean different things to different people. Think more along the lines of “tomato girl.”
Tomato Girl is not one of its kind in its hyperspecificity and high level of online relevance. There are clean girls, downtown girls, messy French girls, and coquettes. There is balletcore, gorpcore, normcore, and literally hundreds more aesthetics with equally specific influences and visual qualities. During the early stages of the pandemic, I noticed these types of words popping up on TikTok more than ever before, coming in parallel to a ton of microlabeled lifestyle content. Videos on how to have a “cottagecore picnic” or how to give your room a “coquette makeover” ran rampant in my algorithm.
Through the TikTok algorithm, what once was a more niche aspirational section of the internet that people weren’t addressing directly was amplifying and spreading like wildfire. And, of course, as these words began to seep into the average woman’s TikTok feed, marketing and commerce emerged to be increasingly at the forefront of this type of content.
One of the most pervasive aesthetics both in content volume and think piece is the “clean girl aesthetic.” In my mind, the clean girl represents the antithesis of the Doc Martens wearer. The clean girl is more concerned with hyper-productivity, pristine study spaces, and her regimented skincare routine than adventure. Like many aesthetics, it is driven by a desire for non-aesthetic success through the lens of an aesthetic appearance.
Clean girl themed TikTok videos often include aesthetically pleasing morning routines, deep cleaning time lapses, outfit breakdowns, workout videos and productivity content. These videos are highly regimented and feature minimal (clean) color palettes and minimal interaction with the world outside the four beige walls of the clean girl’s apartment. The late-capitalist romanticized isolation of hustle culture is the looming backdrop. The impression of minimalism contradicts the inherent excess represented by the luxurious branded props and 15-step skincare routines.
According to its many advocates online, the clean girl aesthetic supposedly isn’t about the products one uses but is about the behaviors they engage in. Internet aesthetics are largely about projections of a lifestyle and behaviors. Curiously, a concept so wrapped up in a specific lifestyle would be unrecognizable without the specifically branded material items “clean girl aesthetic” content features.
Lifestyle can never be separate from products on the internet, not now that one’s lifestyle is virtually synonymous with their aesthetic — an aesthetic consciously mediated by the products linked in an Amazon storefront. A “clean girl” makes a to-do list but not in a nondescript, unbranded notebook. The clean girl does it on her MacBook. What categorizes the aesthetic is ultimately not the action but the materials used to complete these actions. If you like yoga, waking up early, and drinking wellness shots, selling you a luxury athleisure set you don’t need becomes much easier. Especially if it is grouped in with things you are already inclined to enjoy under the guise of fitting into a “clean girl aesthetic.”
It doesn’t really matter if you are organized and productive. The aesthetic is doing all the heavy lifting. Many aesthetics rely on assumptions about one’s character and values that don’t necessarily need to be true beyond an impression of these qualities that can be conveyed online. Thousands of people earn a fortune on the internet by force-feeding us the next product we swear will finally make us the person we created in our mind when we click “add to cart.”
You would think someone like me, captivated by the Tumblr age’s alternative aesthetics, would never fall for the clean girl aesthetic’s promises. I wish this was true. Even though I hate what the clean girl aesthetic represents, no one is immune to propaganda. Alongside the 4 pairs of Doc Martens sitting in my closet– I also have a pair of Uggs and a Skims baby tee. I really enjoy both of these items, but if I’m being totally honest, I don’t think I ever would have purchased them if it weren’t for the prevalence of the clean girl aesthetic. In this way, this aesthetic is similar to the aspirational promises of Doc Martens in 2013 than meets the eye.
So many of us are falling for these marketing campaigns every day as aspirational representation. Arthoes are a marketing campaign for Fjallraven backpacks, just like clean girls are a marketing campaign for Apple products and greens powder. It doesn’t matter if you make art – what matters more is whether the outfit you wear represents the image of someone who does. It doesn’t matter if you fail a test if you have the aesthetic planner to project the image of an organized student. The common theme is that any of these aesthetics can be marketing campaigns for any company that aligns themselves with that aesthetic– regardless of how well the product works or what concern a consumer is actually trying to address. Do you really want a clear complexion? Or do you want to be the type of person who maintains a regimented skincare routine to attain a clear complexion?
Our understandings of these products for their utilitarian value (or even their appearance exclusively) are being replaced with our associations with the shallow subsection of people represented using them. With this framework in place, we will never be content with our purchases as the empty promises of products become more apparent each time we open a new package.
When seen at its endpoint, the original spark of inspiration I felt when perceiving Doc Martens feels tainted, considering the internet-age perception that a hyper-specific type of look (along with all the qualities tied to it) is purchasable through an affiliate link. Or, for a different type of person, a small batch of ethically made online exclusive boutiques. The genuine inspiration my early internet use brought me shows an early example of the type of product brand association we now see running rampant. Now, there are more viral, lifestyle promise making, must-have products than one person could even conceptualize.
The more aesthetics are defined with brand specificity, the less consumers will flesh out what we like and what purchasing decisions we want. Instead, the algorithm is doing it for us. As the cycle plays out month after month, we aid in churning out new aesthetics. Niche aesthetics have become a form of the oldest trick in the marketing book– selling a lifestyle, an alternate personality, an ideal self. Dare I say, a dreamworld. Any creativity or authenticity that these aesthetics may start with is quickly bastardized by influencers and brands promising to sell us something unpurchasable. Our identities are becoming increasingly tied to the products or media we consume as the internet entrenches us deeper and deeper into a scrambled chaos of late capitalist purchasing in pursuit of identity. And we are ready in the comment section, gatekeeping accusations at the ready, fiending for the affiliate link that will finally give it to us.
on the pulse !!!