Pinterest girlies, Tumblr girlbloggers, and TikTok it-girls are all on their way to becoming the next supermodels. They’re growing their hair out, taking ashwagandha, drinking chia seed water with lemon slices, and doing skincare that is expensive and imported. Gone are the days of Kate Moss and the Olsen twins; these days, it’s all about Wonyoung and Adriana Lima, and your 2010s-Tumblr self had better keep up. Trade in your snake bites for angel fangs, your emo makeup for douyin, and your cardio for pilates, because we are in the era of the mainstream extreme glow up.
So how do you get there? Simple. Wake up at five am every morning, and take your meds every day, and prioritize self care, and lose that weight, take the garbage out, and clean your room, and drink enough water, and work out more. Every minute, every hour, think and wonder about how to improve yourself and maybe—maybe finally clear the worms from your brain and the ivy from your body; maybe cut yourself free from the hair that’s weighing you down; maybe finally be enough.Â
Then, oil your hair and grow it out after cutting yourself free from it — a mistake, all the cool chic girls are growing out their hair, so complain about how you were a victim of the wolf cut, of layers, of the big chop. You should go to pilates and journal and romanticize a little life, stop listening to that lame fake-emo music, make yourself happy, and be enough. Be enough for you, and for everyone else constantly watching, because they are watching, and because you are better than this.
This year I started accutane and focused on nutrition, because I need more healthy fats and no carbs, but I can’t cut them out completely, but refined carbs are bad for you, and any meat you eat must be lean but still get your fats in, and throughout this all I will never outgrow white rice and chili and Polish food, but it’s ruining my chances at a glow-up, and I am better than this! I swear I am better than this!Â
And when my skin purges and my hair is not quite long but not quite short, and when I am so completely exhausted, it will all be worth it, because after this, I will sing better and laugh louder and draw more and read more, and I will be the academic they all see in me, because they see it in me, because they see Me and I will not fail them. I promise you, I will be the one you dreamed I’d be, appease the audience and be loved.
But I think we all know I always return to my short hair, just as you will always return to your roots. When the aesthetic washes away, you will be just as miserable as your twelve-year-old self in the mid-2010s, wondering how you got here, how self-improvement became self-hatred. It happened because you forgot that you are worthy and enough just as you are.