Girl,Be Serious

When Did Life Become a Trend?

When did having a personality become so expensive?

Every few months, the internet hands us a new one. A new color. A new pair of shoes. A new skincare routine that is somehow “acne safe.” A new apartment aesthetic. Suddenly, we’re all supposed to be the same girl—and somehow convince ourselves it’s individuality.

I miss the days when being “basic” just meant liking something everyone else liked. Now apparently I need an aesthetic, a signatureo drink, a personality, a skincare routine, and an oddly specific interior design style.

Somewhere along the way, trends stopped being things we wore and started becoming things we were.

We’re constantly being told, “Be yourself.”

But is being ourselves now just opening Pinterest, creating a board called The Me I’ll Become, and saving pictures of other women that we’ll eventually try to recreate—only to wonder why we don’t look exactly like them?

When did being yourself start meaning being like every other girl, just in a different font?

When did we all become “clean girls”?

Suddenly, we’re drinking matcha, wearing matching sets, waking up at 5 a.m., and somehow maintaining perfect skin, perfectly smooth hair, and an Instagram feed that looks like it was professionally lit by God himself.

And somewhere between the morning Pilates class and the iced matcha photo, you start wondering:

Should I be her, too?

But who exactly is she?

Because let’s be honest—matcha tastes a little like grass, matching sets are sold separately, and waking up at 5 a.m. isn’t an aesthetic. It’s exhausting.

Yet somehow, the internet has convinced us that this is what having your life together looks like.

Maybe that’s the trick.

We don’t just want the outfit anymore. We want the girl wearing it.

We want her routine. Her apartment. Her hair. Her skin. Her body. Her relationship. Her seemingly effortless little life.

And suddenly, being yourself feels a lot like shopping from a list.

And maybe that’s what bothers me most.

It’s not that I hate the clean girl aesthetic. I mean, who doesn’t want good skin, nice hair, and an apartment that looks like it belongs in a magazine?

It’s that somewhere along the way, we stopped taking inspiration from other people and started taking instructions.

There’s a very thin line between “I love that” and “I should probably become that.”

Because now it’s not enough to have a cute outfit. You need the right body to wear it. The right apartment to take the photo in. The right coffee to hold in your hand. The right boyfriend standing somewhere just outside the frame.

And God forbid you post a photo that doesn’t match your feed.

Maybe we’re not actually obsessed with the things themselves.

Maybe we’re obsessed with what those things seem to say about us.

That we’re put together.

That we’re desirable.

That we’re interesting.

That we’re doing life correctly.

As a 20-year-old girl, I’m exhausted.

Apparently, by now I’m supposed to have my life together. A perfect career. A brand-new car. The designer wardrobe. The perfect apartment. The perfect body. And, of course, the perfect Instagram to prove that I have all of it.

Because if you don’t have those things, are you really the “it girl”?

But who decided what an “it girl” is supposed to look like in the first place?

Maybe we’re all just girls with perfectly curated Instagram pages and very imperfect lives. Girls constantly being handed a new version of the “ideal girl” and wondering if we’re supposed to keep up.

One day she’s effortlessly cool. The next, she’s waking up at 5 a.m. and drinking green juice. Then suddenly she’s mysterious, expensive-looking, and somehow has a closet that costs more than my car.

And somewhere between trying to become her and trying to keep up with her, I started wondering:

When did we stop being the “it girls” of our own lives?

And apparently, the “it girl” pressure doesn’t stop at what we wear or how our Instagram looks.

It follows us into our relationships, too.

Because somewhere along the way, having a boyfriend became another accessory to the lifestyle.

Not just any boyfriend, either.

He should bring you flowers, plan surprise dates, take good pictures of you, know your coffee order, post you on your birthday, and somehow always have his hand resting perfectly on your waist in every photo.

And if he doesn’t?

Well… suddenly you’re wondering if your relationship is falling behind.

But then I started thinking about sex.

Because if social media can convince us what our relationships should look like, it can definitely convince us what our sex lives should look like, too.

Apparently, we’re all supposed to be confident, adventurous, desirable, effortlessly sexy, and somehow completely comfortable in our bodies at all times.

But what happens when you’re not?

What happens when you don’t feel sexy? When you don’t want sex? When you’re nervous? When your body doesn’t look like the bodies you’ve been scrolling past all day?

When you’re lying next to someone you love and your brain is somehow more concerned with whether you look good than whether you’re actually enjoying yourself?

It’s funny.

We’re told to be confident women. To own our sexuality. To know what we want.

But nobody really talks about how difficult it can be to figure out what you want when you’ve spent your whole life being shown what you’re supposed to want.

Maybe that’s the real problem.

We’re not just comparing our outfits anymore.

We’re comparing our relationships. Our bodies. Our sex lives. How wanted we feel. How often we have sex. How our boyfriend treats us. How attractive we look next to him.

And suddenly, something that’s supposed to be intimate becomes another little competition we never agreed to enter.

So maybe the question isn’t whether your relationship looks like everyone else’s.

Maybe it’s whether it actually feels good when nobody’s watching.

Because the best parts of love probably aren’t very Instagrammable anyway.

And then there are the little things you don’t even realize are affecting you until they do.

For example, I hate watching movies with my boyfriend.

Not because I don’t like movies. I just don’t appreciate the way Hollywood casually drops a beautiful actress into my living room at 10 p.m. with perfect hair, glowing skin, dewy makeup, and somehow a full face of makeup while she’s supposedly going to bed.

And of course, we’re both seeing her.

My boyfriend won’t admit she’s hot—which I appreciate, obviously—but I’m not blind.

She’s hot.

So now the movie ends, the credits are rolling, and I’m supposed to casually go to sleep next to this man looking like… me?

Because what if I don’t look like her?

What if my skin isn’t glowing? What if my hair is a mess? What if I look tired? What if I don’t wake up looking like I just walked out of a shampoo commercial?

And suddenly, I’m not thinking about the movie anymore.

I’m thinking about whether I’m attractive enough.

Which is ridiculous, because she’s an actress.

There are hair and makeup people. There are lights. There are cameras. There is probably an entire village standing just outside that bedroom scene.

But somehow, at midnight, my brain doesn’t care about any of that.

And I think that’s what these beauty standards do so well.

They make completely unrealistic things feel like the bare minimum.

And then we carry those expectations into our relationships.

We want to feel desired, but we’re also constantly wondering if we’re desirable enough.

We want intimacy, but sometimes we’re too busy wondering what we look like during it to actually be present in it.

And maybe that’s the part nobody posts.

Nobody posts the girl lying in bed wondering if she looks good enough.

Nobody posts the awkward conversations, the insecurities, the nights when you don’t feel sexy, or the moments when you just want to be loved without having to look like an “it girl” while you’re being loved.

Maybe real intimacy starts when you stop performing for an audience that isn’t even there.

Maybe being the “it girl” was never supposed to mean having the newest bag, the perfect body, the designer wardrobe, or a relationship that looks like a movie.

Maybe she’s not the girl waking up at 5 a.m. with perfect skin and a green juice in her hand.

Maybe she’s me.

The girl in mismatched pajamas.

The girl who doesn’t own designer everything.

The girl who still doesn’t even have her license yet.

The girl with real skin, messy hair, and a life that doesn’t always look put together.

The girl whose relationship doesn’t always look perfect online, but feels real when the phone is face down.

The girl who can watch a beautiful actress walk across the screen without immediately wondering if she’s prettier than me…

Okay, I’m still working on that one.

Because maybe real life isn’t supposed to look like an Instagram feed.

Maybe it’s supposed to be a little messy. A little ordinary. Sometimes completely unphotogenic.

Trends will change. Aesthetics will disappear. And by next Tuesday, the internet will probably have found a new girl for us to envy.

But I think I’m done trying to become her.

I’d rather be the girl I actually am.

Mismatched pajamas. No designer labels. No license yet. Real skin. Real insecurities. A real relationship. A real life that probably wouldn’t make a very good Instagram post.

And maybe that’s the most “it girl” thing I could do.

Not being the girl everyone wants to be.

Just being the girl I want to be.

So maybe we didn’t stop being the “it girls” of our own lives.

Maybe we just got so busy trying to look like her…

that we forgot we already were.