The Drowning of the It Girl
All it takes to be an It girl these days is Armani foundation after your Drunk Elephant bronze drops, slightly baggy Reformation jeans, a face steamer, red light skin therapy paired with understated botox, some sort of ultra-niche, ultra-expensive perfume (not Le Labo, obviously), the new Loewe tote, a Pilates membership with leggings legs, a routine sleep schedule, a high protein diet, lots of water, and a healthy relationship with your mother.
Can It wait?
(As I type this, I fight the urge to Google “baggy Reformation jeans”)
Oh boy, do the girls on the internet know how to sell me! Trickery! Tomfoolery! Every time I open my phone, I am bamboozled into buying something else. Dramatic maybe. I have become hyper-aware of hyper-consumerism and all the bait that lingers for me on the internet in the shape of a dewy-skinned late-twentysomething girl with perfectly laminated eyebrows (like, good lamination, not Love Island lamination) telling me some insane thing she found that changed her life.
There is a looming pressure that exists at this age. “Get It together!” my inner monologue screams from time to time. She’s really softened up, I’ll say. But the good news is that at least according to the internet, you can now buy It. Savings are for old people! You’re only young once! And if you don’t have It together, you can at least look the part.
I think I must be a prime target for every It girl brand. Which is hilarious because I’m building a career in working with influencers to sell you things. I should really know better. But after a few glasses of wine on a Friday night consisting of making some sort of TikTok pasta and watching Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle for the hundredth time, I’ll bounce back and forth between TikTok, Pinterest, and Amazon resisting the urge to give in to temptation and rebuild the life of my dreams by adding just a tiny bit more onto my credit card tab.
The girls online can sell without selling. I’ll watch Dara Levitan add a few drops of a $40 serum to her face as primer while she tells me a story about what she and her new boyfriend did last weekend. Suddenly, I have to have it. The serum. Because the serum is one step closer to looking like I have It together. It’s not that I emulate Dara. I’m not naive enough to think that her lifestyle of gallivanting around in $300 tops drinking $30 cocktails is fully self-made or relatable. I don’t want to assume, but using context clues (hint: a twentysomething living in New York City without a real job) maybe she was born into It. And there are hundreds of Dara Levitans online.
It’s not Dara’s fault that we are in a capitalistic consumerist spiral online. TikTok Shop is the latest addition to the array of new world digital point-of-sales that offer consumers the ability to purchase anything with just a click. You don’t even have time to think. No more reaching for your wallet and having a moment of pause as you slowly punch in your credit card number. Just Apple Pay. And with TikTok incentivizing creators with commission on their sales, our timelines have become engulfed in non-ads. The hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has over 86 billion views. It’s a social media epidemic as people hawk everything from ramen noodles to body-shaping dresses to Korean anti-wrinkle face masks. I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface.
Girls Just Wanna Grow Plants; Agency for Nature
The #GirlMath trend spoke volumes about the purchasing power young women have in the United States. Indeed men buy and women spend. We joked about using the ‘savings’ we incurred as a result of not buying a coffee as a means to justify getting our nails done or buying more makeup. The fact is that corporations understand how easily women are made to feel inadequate in one way or another, and they exploit it. And now we’re so deep into our consumerist spiral that we do it to each other. We condition each other to find worthiness in consumption. To find It in our skincare routines and shoe collections.
I’m optimistic the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction as #deinfluencing and anti-consumerist narratives are gaining traction online. People’s brains and wallets are experiencing fatigue. I hope. I know my brain is tired of being told that the jeans I bought five years ago aren’t good enough anymore.
Can I just be an It girl on my own terms?
