You’re probably familiar with social media’s latest “it girl”: she’s always perfectly groomed, dressed in beige athleisurewear and swanning from her Scandi-inspired apartment to a Pilates studio. Crucially, she makes her pristine existence seem attainable, you just need the right products. But is this breed of micro-influencers simply another way of holding women to impossible standards?
Who’s That girl? You might have seen her: her hair is thick, shiny and bouncy; her athleisure is neutral, matching and VPL-free; she wears understated but expensive-looking gold jewellery and delicately selects bunches of celery and kale from supermarket shelves. Or, perhaps, you haven’t seen her. The thing about That Girl is that she is both immediately recognisable for those who inhabit certain algorithmically generated corners of the Internet and also entirely fictional. If you haven’t seen her in real life, perhaps you’ve seen her in your TikTok feed.
That Girl gets up early, journals, works out, taps at a Macbook for a few hours and prepares a green juice. Her home is clean, beige and curated. Often, That Girl’s marble benchtops or skyline views reveal a largely unacknowledged truth: she is also rich.
Her life is formulaic enough to offer a sense of attainability, while remaining fundamentally aspirational.
By definition, she is the object of an external gaze. That Girl is the put-together girl you see from across the aisle as you pick up a packet of tampons and a tube of toothpaste. She is the girl at the front of your yoga class, rippling through each movement as you resist the urge to drop into child’s pose or an early shavasana. The point of That Girl is that somebody else sees her and whispers, “Who’s That Girl?”. She exists when she is observed. Social media has invited this observation beyond the public and into the private sphere of our lives, and so now we can follow That Girl out of the yoga studio and into her home life. How does That Girl wash her hair? What does she eat for breakfast? Don’t worry — she’ll show you, in a shoppable TikTok video.
Over the past year or so, #ThatGirl videos have proliferated on TikTok, but the concept of the “always optimising” woman is hardly new. That Girl is, in many ways, only the latest iteration of the same pressures women have always faced to stay thin, young and pretty, but wrapped up with a more palatable “self-care” ribbon.
In 2019, Jia Tolentino wrote about “the tyranny of the ideal woman” for The Guardian. As Jia wrote, the optimising wellness woman is “sincerely interested in whatever the market demands of her (good looks, the impression of indefinitely extended youth, advanced skills in self-presentation and self-surveillance)”.
Some aspects of the That Girl trend are relatively harmless, such as encouraging us to drink more water and eat more vegetables. There is sometimes a moral undertone to this advice — that caring for your body is morally good and failing to do so is morally bad — but it is not necessarily dangerous. Wanting to improve ourselves is okay, as long as we recognise that life does not come with a final level of “optimisation” we can graduate from.
In our wellness-obsessed society, the same harmful messages can slip through under the guise of “health”. Because many of the most important aspects of real self-care — such as nurturing strong relationships with the people you love and protecting your mental health — do not translate well into 30-second videos, That Girl content emphasises the tangible manifestations of “wellness” instead. Often, this translates to shoppable, branded representations of self-care, such as pretty activewear (that you can buy directly through That Girl’s Amazon shopfront, should you like) and expensive supplements.
This model works well for the advertisers and influencers who fill the self-improvement space on social media. It also excludes those who do not fit the aspirational That Girl aesthetic (which is typically thin, white and Eurocentrically beautiful) or possess the means to afford That Girl’s lifestyle, while contributing to the myth that through purchasing material items, you can create happiness and “optimise” your life.
That Girl’s life is sold to us as progressive — she works hard and practises self-care — but iconography of mid-morning Pilates classes, bodily regulation, cooking and cleaning suggest a much more traditional interpretation of the aspirational “ideal” woman. It is often unclear whether she is employed (although, for many women, creating content on social media can be a lucrative business), and most That Girl content takes place inside the home, as That Girl moves serenely from home workout to green juice to benchtop scrubbing.
When performed through expensive workout classes and elaborate skincare routines, the tenuous lens of “self-care” through which That Girl content is presented only works to perpetuate the same pressures to remain youthful and toned that women have always faced. While the concept of That Girl functions to objectify and commodify the female experience for a predominantly female audience, it nevertheless perpetuates age-old patriarchal ideals of womanhood. That Girl content exists where capitalism and patriarchy meet; it tantalises us with the promise that we can buy our way to optimised womanhood and beauty through the “right” products, foods, clothes and exercise classes, if only we work hard enough.
Of course, we can genuinely enjoy the same things as That Girl. I adore stepping into a Pilates studio where I am told what to do with my arms and legs for 45 minutes and step out feeling stronger and flushed with endorphins. Can I honestly say that no part of the pleasure I derive from this activity comes from performing the societally praised activity of “looking after myself” through exercise? Probably not. But perhaps we should try to enjoy these things without wanting to be That Girl, as best as we can.
As integrative psychotherapist Seerut K. Chawla writes on Instagram, “you don’t need a morning routine with lemon water, candles and a journal if it’s making you overwhelmed”. I want to buy my kale and my toothpaste in the supermarket without thinking about how I look or whether my basket or my outfit is That Girl-approved. I want to go to Pilates because it gets me into my body and out of my head for a while. Perhaps a comforting reminder is that not even That Girl is That Girl all the time: she gets pimples, eats fries, runs out of toilet paper and fights with her partner. We just don’t see it on TikTok.
Sarah MacDonald is a Sydney-based journalism and law student, content editor and freelance food blogger. She loves slow Sunday-night dinners, good books and early morning Pilates classes. Find her on Instagram @sarahsspoonful.
