"That" girl aesthetic and purity

 

Hannah Sussman

Across the internet, the "That" girl aesthetic has provided a new unreachable standard for physical and moral purity for women. Like its predecessors "soft girl", "clean girl", "vanilla girl" etc, the trend of "that" girl provides a moral framework for how one should treat their body and more broadly how they should interact with the outside world. The trend of "that" girl presents an ideal version of being a young woman and provides instructions as to how this image can be achieved. By presenting youtube videos like the one this image is taken from, the trend invites others to participate creating what Mary Douglas called "unity in experience" (2002: 3) in her work Purity and Danger. The trend encourages a cleansing of self and space, as can be seen by the clean single color outfit in the center image, and the white backdrop in most images. The rituals include permitting only specific foods and drinks into your body. smoothies and health drinks as three of the four drinks above show. The food shown is avocado toast which is healthy, but also costly. Investing in avocado toast shows that you care about what you put into your body enough to invest in more expensive food choices. One key aspect of being "that" girl is that you must show others your progress. You are only truly "productive", "glowing up", "healthy lifestyle" if you are displaying your success publicly. This public display of ritual is also aligned with Douglas's statement that "symbolic patterns are worked out and publicly displayed"(3)

The above image shows the importance of the purity of "that" girl publicly displaying the purity rituals. At a surface level the image above is taken from a video, which means that the producer of the video is publicly showing that she is so much of a "that" girl that she can teach you how to be a "that" girl as well. It is notable that the healthy drinks she is consuming are shown in clear glasses, this is done because the act of consuming pure drinks is not enough, the pure drinks must be publicly shown. A similar logic can be seen in the center image which shows a closet on the right, however the most important clothing items are shown on the exposed left closet. The revealing clothing choice can also be viewed as a way to publicly show the purity ritual of exercise which removes the dirt of fat or unhealthy living.

A key aspect of Douglas's interpretation of rituals around purity is that the rituals operate on a symbolic level often in response to a broader social fear or desire (152). In the image above a girl can be seen with glowing skin and a perfectly toned body. The images dance the line of cultivated and real, balancing the high beauty standards women must meet against the accusation of being fake that might come from wearing more makeup. Beyond the fear of being seen as physically not pure or beautiful, the trend also highlights the desire to be socially valuable. This "productivity" metric encourages rituals like waking up early to work out as they present an image of self more focused on productivity than something like sleeping. The productivity desire also accounts for the coffee shown in the top right of the image. Although coffee is not as healthy, the image shows ice has been added (for extra hydration), and accepts the necessity of caffeine for productivity.

Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London and New York: Routledge.