Why wasn’t this cool ten years ago?
Recently, the clean girl aesthetic has been trending on TikTok. Doing things like putting oil in your hair to make it look slick, using big claw clips, wearing gold jewelry— especially big hoop earrings and having fluffy eyebrows, have been glamorized by TikTok users, usually in videos that are titled “Day in my Life as a Clean Girl” or “How to be a Clean Girl.” This is a cool and fun trend but we cannot keep ignoring the roots of these ideas: women of color.Â
I remember being in elementary school and going to school with oil in my hair, a routine that my grandmother taught my mom and my mom taught me. I remember going to school and a girl asking me why my hair was so greasy. I remember feeling so embarrassed and never putting oil in my hair again after, a decision that caused my hair to become so dry later on. Recently, I saw a picture of this same girl from elementary school on Instagram where her hair is slicked back with oil. It’s not greasy now? What’s frustrating about this trend is that most people don’t realize that the trend comes from ideas that used to be looked down upon years ago. Another example is the big gold jewelry. This accessory was quite popular amongst black women in the early 2000s and many people deemed it “trashy.” Now, it’s hard to find thick jewelry because so many people are trying to buy them. Â
There’s no problem with following these trends, but there is a problem with ignoring where they came from. As long as people are paying respect to the cultures where their trends are coming from, then everything is great. But living in ignorance is unacceptable.Â