Soledad Lee
Social Media/Graphics Editor
“Clean girl, deer pretty, that girl, 2014 tumblr girl, mob wife.” These sayings have been used to describe aesthetics or looks of people on the social media app TikTok.
Gen Z grew up watching mostly YouTube and wasn’t introduced to TikTok, or what was then “Musical.ly,” until 2014. Even then, it was an app where people lipsynced to music, so the app has definitely progressed with its content.
Around March 2020, when the outbreak of COVID-19 was going on in the United States, TikTok began to become more popular among teenagers, as most people downloaded it as a joke.
“Since the start of 2020, Tiktok has surged in popularity, receiving 52.2 million unique American users, 12 million from March alone. It now sits as the most downloaded app in the world at more than 2 billion downloads,” according to an article called, “TikTok: The Summation of 2020’s Duality and Chaos,” from harvardpolitics.com.
Micro trends have always occurred especially around the presence of social media and influencers, and so has the pressure to participate.
“Micro-trends emerged from this rapid fire fashion cycle. They come and go quickly, and are usually cheap to purchase, so they’re meant to be thrown out when their stylishness has expired,” according to thelist.com.
As Gen Z and millennials scroll through their “for you page,” it is targeted to their interests and after showing interest, similar content will show up; keeping users engaged.
“TikTok relies on a number of signals to identify what kinds of videos users want to see…Strong signals include whether you watched a video to the end, whether you shared it, and if you followed the creator who uploaded it afterward,” according to an article called, “TikTok Finally Explains How the ‘For You’ Algorithm Works,” from wired.com.
With that recently, influencers have been posting videos promoting brands. This leads to many users being influenced to buy the product. Some of the brands most popular: “Summer Fridays,” “Sol de Janeiro” and “Bloom Nutrition.”
Considering fashion cycling through, the “clean girl aesthetic,” took force in 2023 through influencers showing effortless makeup and hair and a stress free productive lifestyle.
Another popular trend on TikTok was for girls to determine whether they were, “cat pretty,” “deer pretty,” “bunny pretty” or “fox pretty.”
With this kind of trend circulating around, it often has the ability to make people feel bad about themselves, questioning what they look like and if they even fit any of the determined looks.
With the sayings “that girl” and “it girl,” the pressure is even worse. They both provide these lifestyles of waking up early, journaling everyday, and going to the gym. Realistically, not everyone can achieve this.
The trends promoting these lifestyles are not always affordable. They include things like a matching workout set or a $50 ice roller.
Overall, a lot of these micro trends or trends in general make young people feel the need to buy a product or put a lot of pressure on themselves to achieve a lifestyle, so they end up feeling bad about their current lifestyle.
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