My nose is almost touching my left knee when I feel the hot water that had been streaming over my back suddenly turn to ice. Twenty-six minutes in, the abrupt change in temperature has put a shocking end to the extensive #EverythingShower regimen I’ve been trying to adopt.
According to my TikTok algorithm investing solid time in cleansing and conditioning my entire body will pay off in purity: I’ll be cleaner, smoother and therefore more prepared for the days ahead, and enjoy well-earned prettiness: my hair will shine, my skin will glow, and I’ll experience a sense of self-worth strong enough to eclipse an inevitably colossal water bill.
In place of hustle culture, the pandemic ushered us into an all-out obsession with self-care. We were encouraged to slow down and engage in rituals that recharged our batteries, to live slower so we could feel less stressed and ultimately sustain long-term health and happiness. Social media platforms became veritable instruction manuals on how to romanticise the minutiae of our daily lives with self-love rituals designed to help us disconnect. Ironic? And yet, thanks to those same apps, we’ve never done more or bought more in our attempts to do less.
Women have long been conditioned and encouraged to strive for certain physical ideals, but now the goal posts are constantly shifting. Somehow, our aesthetic ambitions feel simultaneously more and less attainable than they’ve ever been. We’re in constant pursuit of some synthetic self-actualised social media deity. Vanity has been repackaged and resold to us as our own virtuous quest for ultimate enlightenment — with a little cosmetic intervention, obviously.
As Günseli Yalcinkaya wrote for Dazed, the internet leads us to believe that beauty is entirely “hackable” and can be earned via “endless modding of our facial features through makeup, filters, photo editing and tweakments — all things that can be bought and paid for, of course”. It’s the ubiquitous feeling that the path to your glossiest, greatest self is only a few glow up tips away. The journey doesn’t end, of course, there’s always a new opportunity for self-improvement lurking down the feed.
The #EverythingShower hashtag, which has garnered more than 810 million views on TikTok, is only one example of the platform’s relentless self-improvement trend cycles that heavily imply the Best Version of Yourself is one of greater attractiveness. On social media, AI filters can ‘solve’ beauty conundrums by mapping your features and assigning the best hair length or eyeliner technique. There are tutorials that can calculate the most flattering makeup (from natural to high-glam) for your features. Elsewhere, users flex their exhaustive no-makeup makeup routines in the quest for ‘natural’ beauty.
According to the Business of Fashion, ageing has become an increasing concern for younger women. While gen Z celebrities such as Kylie Jenner layer ageing filters over their faces and lament how they look with wrinkles, news outlets are documenting the rise of gen Alpha’s ‘Sephora tweens’ and their worrying infatuation with active skincare. The new candid nature of social media has also bred disdain for gatekeeping, which means creators are being more open about having had cosmetic work done and some are even documenting the process for their followers. In parallel, injectable treatments are growing in popularity among younger patients to prevent facial wrinkles before they’ve even had the time to form.
Now, as TikTok trends ebb and flow within my feed, I try to let any pressure to ‘do it all’ pass. I’m still navigating the cadence of an #EverythingShower, but now it’s more important that it feels enjoyable in the moment, rather than a chore. A three-minute rinse is perhaps more realistic, and its reward is more time to do other things — and yes, scrolling on TikTok totally counts. After all, what defines a self-love exercise is up to the self being loved and you can’t put a price on that (yet).
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