Real Girls
A careful look into the lives of women who don't perform for gatekeepers and algorithms
It’s hard to tell what young women actually like. We are exposed to so much undisclosed marketing and peer content produced to appease brands and influencer marketing managers, that it’s easy to mistake buzz for genuine interest. For example, Lyst has been ranking Miu Miu as one of the hottest fashion brands for the past three years, and yet the day of the AW25 show, the girls I follow on Instagram decided to stop holding out for a spot on the PR list and say what seems to have been pent up inside for a few seasons now. “I’m begging u all to stop pretending to like this…it’s over,” one of them wrote over a Vogue Runway screenshot of Look 21 featuring coral red boots and a yellow plaid midi skirt. “This just can’t be what young cool girls want to wear,” cried out another. There was clearly something about the frizzy hair, librarian skirts, and misbuttoned cardigans that no longer captured their reality the way it did in 2023 — although every media review of the collection was largely positive.
Every part of women’s identities – the books on our nightstands, our opinions and values, who we spend time with and where – are leveraged for clicks, followers, and insights swapped between magazines, brands, and marketing agencies. Ironically, the people who claim to understand us the most are the ones mistaking noise for signal, satisfied with picking up on the outer traits of the mainstream female identities without digging deeper. Some are chasing blonde all-American girls who move to New York from Charleston to drink dirty martinis. Others are captivated by tortured artsy girls downtown who never smile in photos and keep a low online profile. Neither realize how similar these two groups of women actually are.
The only girls I care to pay attention to are the ones who don’t perform for others – be it industry gatekeepers or the algorithm. I call them real – a simple world that’s doing a lot of work to describe their elusive qualities. They too want to be liked and capitalize on influence but they are confident enough not to bend their interests to fit an existing mold. They are grateful for sponsorships and invites, but what they are really after are opportunities to “be in the room” which is why rather than turning themselves into digital mannequins and salesmen, they take the long road of becoming friends and collaborators to the people they look up to. It takes a lot of patience and hard work to appear as lucky and effortless as they do.
I spend a lot of time watching and listening to these girls because they are the ones who have the power to move culture, and because selfishly, I want to be one of them. You might not know who they are yet, but you are certainly familiar with their work — these are the girls who mold, capture, and inspire the most interesting names in the zeitgeist until they are big enough to fly on their own. They are talented curators, stylists, writers, makeup artists, models, directors, and they are also just friends of friends…of friends who are down to show up for their peers simply because they see something special in them. To them, it’s less about climbing a ladder or cashing in favors and more about doing what they love with the people they admire. To me, it’s less about predicting what’s next or stealing their swag and more about learning from the women I respect and find interesting.
Mildly disturbed by the LinkedIn-fication of culture research that revolves around unearthing quick insights about a certain demo with the sole purpose of repackaging them into client decks and TikToks, I wanted to take my time and get to know real women the way they deserve – not as part of a statistic or photographs inserted into a marketing brief, but as complex individuals who are so much more than consumers. It turns out that when you dig deeper than surface-level trends and performative behaviors, you realize that there is quite a discrepancy between what the loudest voices in beauty, fashion, and culture say is happening, and where women are actually moving and taking our culture to.
CHAPTER ONE: “STOP SACRIFICING SWAG FOR BEAUTY”
When Emily Wood first graced my feed in 2023, I thought she was kooky. She refers to herself as a “face decorator” rather than a makeup artist which feels appropriate considering her application technique. Emily doesn’t own a ring light. She does her makeup on the balcony, in the elevator, or what looks like British countryside in less than ideal weather conditions. Some days, she whips out a brush to apply a nude color to her lips, and some days, she is slathering neon green eyeshadow all over her eyelids with her fingers. In her hands, a lip pencil is a blush, an eyeshadow, a contour, and a skin tint. Her content doesn’t quite fit anywhere between the intricate makeup videos I watched on YouTube as a teen and the seven-step skincare routines I save on TikTok as a young woman. I wonder if beauty brand managers would’ve still been writing her off as “the weird girl” who doesn’t fit into their brand’s aspirational mood board if the internet didn’t find out that she was Aimee Lee Wood’s sister. I wonder if they would’ve looked at her twice if she wasn’t white and naturally pretty which isn’t to say she doesn’t deserve the attention she is getting.
If you zoom out and look at the bigger picture though, nothing about Emily is weird. After five years of glossy lips, donut glaze skin, and bushy boy brows, we are up for a resurgence of the bolder nostalgic looks. On social media, alternative fashion, beauty, and lifestyle influences have long started thinning, bleaching, and shaving off their eyebrows to replicate the 90s grunge looks, and for a brief moment in 2021, some of them were even drawing dark undereyes. Like Emily, they are applying skincare and makeup in the middle of busy city streets, on subway trains, and in the middle of nowhere. If early beauty creators turned an intimate ritual into entertainment, the youngest generation of beauty creators turned it into performance art. While the final look matters, so does the act of self-expression that is creating it in public.
Outside of the internet, prominent fashion figures, like Alex Consani and Gabbriette made 90s eyebrows part of their signature look. Celebrities, like Julia Fox, Doja Cat, and Chappel Roan, have leaned heavily into drastic red carpet looks that reference everything from pop culture moments to Greek mythology. Margaret Zhang, Tiffany Godoy, and Mix Wei brought progressive makeup looks, reminiscent of the 80s editorial and stage makeup, to the big fashion covers – W Magazine China and Vogue China and Japan – pushing partner brands, like Chanel Beauty, out of their comfort zone. And of course, there is a whole slew of independent magazines and fashion brands that never stopped pushing for artistry and creative expression in beauty.
Last year, Pat McGrath and her team caused a social media frenzy with the porcelain doll looks they created for John Galliano’s last couture show at Margiela. It felt like everyone remotely interested in beauty and fashion was trying to crack what was used to create that porcelain shine on the models’ skin. A year later, those looks materialized in the beauty market in the form of the Skin Fetish mask which caused tension among industry insiders – many questioned whether releasing a $38 mask that the internet has long managed to find a drugstore dupe for, was a smart business decision. Its utility outside of the editorial world was also questionable which is likely why the company launched a much more versatile Skin Fetish setting spray a few weeks ago.
Other beauty companies, like Starface, have been changing the narrative around imperfections with colorful acne patches spotted on everyone from Addison Rae to Lil Uzi Vert. In the past couple of years, their PR reps at Gia Kuan Consulting scored the company The Face and Dazed cover shoots with Madeline Argy and Amelia Gray, Collina Strada runway show at NYFW, and a collaboration with Heaven by Marc Jacobs – pushing the brand and its young customers into the editorial beauty territory that other young commercial brands, like Glossier, Rhode, and Rare Beauty largely stay away from.
None of this is happening in the vacuum. There is an obvious link between what’s happening in the arts, entertainment, and culture at large and beauty trends. Self-expression that’s integral to the queer clubbing and rave scene has exploded into the mainstream post “brat summer” after slowly but surely building up its influence over the past few decades. “Without spaces where subcultures can genuinely experiment with their style, beauty would completely lose out to the clean girl aesthetic,” Hatti Rex writes in the intro of her interview with photographer Felicity Ingram who spent the past two years documenting the experimental fashion and makeup looks created by underground youth. “Nobody is rocking up to reformer pilates or an all-hands meeting with liberty spikes and kabuki make-up, as iconic as that may be.”
These days, stripping off layers and showing up as “authentic self” feels boring rather than refreshing – partially because very few people are authentically interesting and partially because authenticity has lost value and meaning in the current attention economy. All identity construction is artificial even if you are a civilian picking out an outfit, a makeup look, and a hairstyle that feels like you. The only way to remain honest is to embrace the absurdity and use beauty and fashion to create compelling characters. “The world is your stage” calls for exaggerated, almost theatrical makeup that communicates something rather than makes the performers look pretty.
The value of beauty and specifically the type of beauty that fits into the conservative, predominantly white standards, is questionable in the world where women are both increasingly independent and aware of the misogyny that surrounds them. A few months ago, I came across a video that said “I love Emma. She does nothing for the male gaze,” over a screengrab of influencer Emma Chamberlain learning to play a ukulele. Last September, she posted a YouTube video documenting the hairstyles she’s had over the years and the process of making a decision to cut her hair short…and then shorter for the Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty…and then even shorter for The Met. The fans didn’t love it, but she didn’t care, reiterating something along the lines of “it makes me feel cool” over and over again, and seven months later, everyone is finally seeing the vision.
With the rise of the “manosphere” influencers and political figures openly attacking women’s rights, it’s tempting to point to a resurgence of “men repeller” looks – short colorful hair, bleached eyebrows, bold makeup, piercings, and tattoos. But that would mean that any form of women’s self-expression is tied to men in one way or another which is unfair even to the “clean girls” on TikTok who dabble in minimal makeup, stereotypically preferred by men, as a form of self-care and attempt to connect with other women. That would leave out a growing number of women who just don’t care where they stand in relation to the male gaze and want to have fun with the largely female and queer fashion and beauty crowds.
What I find odd is that most of the beauty brands represented in large retailers, like Ulta and Sephora, are still producing products and marketing for the lowest common denominator consumer. Majority of innovation goes into perfecting the formula and creating the ultimate base, blush, and glossy lip. Majority of the marketing budget goes into influencer marketing, aesthetic iPhone photos, and dreamy activations. Very few product developers and marketers care to dig deeper into the recent shifts in women’s behavior, lifestyles, and interests. If they did, we would’ve seen a wider range of shades, colors, and textures, multi-use products, and a variety of face decorations on the market. We would have had thoughtful conversations about beauty in the context of self-expression, art, creativity instead of watching someone blend their blush and reapply lip gloss over and over again.
i loved this!
what a good read!
Lots of good stuff here. Made me think of how we're seeing more innovation from makeup artists (violette fr, isamaya, pat mcgrath).