> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.tawnymagazine.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Your ‘Clean Girl’ Trend Was Built on Black and Brown Beauty Rituals - URL: https://www.tawnymagazine.com/clean-girl-trend/ - Published: 2026-09-22T17:11:54.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-22T17:11:54.000Z - Description: The "clean girl" aesthetic has taken social media by storm in recent years. Users, however, are forgetting where this aesthetic originated. - Author: Taylyn Washington-Harmon - Tags: Hot Take, Social Media, Beauty, Trends, All Beauty, All Features My grandmother was the original “clean girl,” born in the Jim Crow South in 1950, a child of the '60s, and a 20-something in the '70s. When my grandmother’s hair wasn’t defiantly cut into a pageboy bob, she wore it long and slicked back into a perfectly smooth ponytail or braid, or swirled up in a neat bun. Her caramel-brown face was framed by tiny gold hoops that I now wear in my own ears. Her jewelry was dainty—a gold chain and a gold anklet that she never took off. No look of hers was complete without her signature brown lip liner and baby hairs swooping at her temples. My grandmother passed in 2024, wearing this look until the very end. I don’t think she knew her look would be worn by millions of girls and women in the 2020s and rebranded as the “clean girl" aesthetic. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5d/7f/5d7fd442-71ad-4570-8922-dc1cc32e7d8e/content/images/2026/09/IMG_7684.JPG) My grandmother (right) and I in 2017\. --- The “clean girl” aesthetic was popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic, [particularly on TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@daisyherriott/video/7271956956246445345?%5Fr=1&%5Ft=ZP-99p6Rryrrry&ref=tawnymagazine.com), when trends were shifting from colorful and highly individualized to simplified and homogeneous. No source pinpoints exactly where the term “clean girl” came from in terms of aesthetics, but the look was popularized by mainstream celebrities like Hailey Bieber, Bella Hadid, and Kylie Jenner. Some theorize that the look is a [response to economic instability](https://www.reddit.com/r/BeautyGuruChatter/comments/veqr79/clean%5Fgirl%5Faesthetic%5Fwhat%5Fbrought%5Fus%5Fhere%5Fand/?ref=tawnymagazine.com), which makes sense, since millions lost their jobs or were no longer working in offices during the pandemic – myself included. My grandmother, who wasn’t poor nor rich, was particularly frugal when it came to her beauty rituals. She liked using a brown eyeliner as an eyebrow pencil and lip liner topped with a cheap beauty supply lip gloss. This has become a "clean girl" staple, but for a whopping $20 at Sephora. "The clean girl aesthetic is now a brand rather than a combination of specific beauty practices because it can be hashtagged, it can be bought and sold, and it can be named, renamed, and framed in various lenses depending on who's doing the targeting on a digital platform in particular,” [Brittney Miles, PhD](https://www.brittneymiles.com/?ref=tawnymagazine.com), assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says. According to a [quick Pinterest search](https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=clean%20girl&ref=tawnymagazine.com), the prototypical "clean girl" is a white woman with a sun-kissed (but not too dark) tan, blond slicked-back hair that’s never an inch out of place, fluffy but never bushy eyebrows, and barely-there makeup, as a marker of “clean” and healthy skin. Her look is neat, lightly moist, and youthful. She’s a clean girl, never a woman, and her physicality emphasizes her age, or lack thereof. She may be carrying an iced matcha latte or a baby pink lip gloss. She looks like a whitewashed version of the girls and women I’d hardly seen celebrated in fashion magazines—inner-city Black and Brown girls who juxtaposed their slicked-back hairstyles and gold hoops with baggy tees, sweatpants, or a work uniform, not $250 Alo Yoga sets. Is this subconsciously signaling who can be a "clean girl" vs. who isn’t? "\[The aesthetic\] becomes clean once it's adorned by a white woman and their cosign legitimizes it,” adds Dr. Miles. “Therefore, removing it from the ‘dirty taintedness’ — ‘tainted’ by the Brown and Blackness of the aesthetic.” --- When [myths of Black dirtiness](https://doingsts.com/smellworlds/pdf/Andrew%20Kettler---The%20Smell%20of%20Slavery%5FOlfactory%20Racism%20and%20the%20Atlantic%20World%28smell%20and%20race--smell%20and%20purity--colonial%20sensorium--smell%20and%20subjectivity%29.pdf?ref=tawnymagazine.com) arose from slavery, to take Black aesthetics and repackage them as clean for white skin gives me a particular kind of whiplash. Black women have to go to near-extreme lengths to prove our cleanliness and hygiene, while our customs to enforce that we look “clean” have become just another “aesthetic” for others to play with. For me, Jenner’s “[partless slickback bun](https://www.nssgclub.com/en/beauty/45639/kylie-jenner-s-partless-slick-back-proves-just-how-incredibly-easily-influenced-we-are?ref=tawnymagazine.com)” was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. The same Black girl who slicks back or braids her hair to oil and protect it, while making sure she still looks neat and presentable to the average person, can still be deemed ghetto or tacitly dirty just because of her race. However, the non-Black girl who does the same is seen as the pinnacle of femininity and fashion-forwardness. From [Kim Kardashian’s cornrows](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/boxer-braids-hairstyle-history?ref=tawnymagazine.com) lauded by the media as “boxer braids,” to gold hoop earrings sold as “[mini Hailey hoops](https://shop.tiktok.com/us/pdp/the-mini-hailey-hoops-gold-vermeil-18mm-diameter-6mm-thick/1732350463899898750?ref=tawnymagazine.com),” I’ve watched the styles and trends I’ve grown up with repackaged and sold to non-Black and non-Latino audiences as trendy and chic. Meanwhile, the women who have sported these looks for decades don’t see a single penny from it. Bieber created the highly priced clear lip gloss that launched a thousand ships for filler-puffed lips, while I’m happy to rock my classic L.A. Girl gloss on my God-given lips for less than $5\. "There is economic violence,” adds Dr. Miles. “When Black and Brown girls are kept out of accessing the opportunities, the brand deals, the sponsorships... they're not in these boardrooms being able to talk about this aesthetic and how to actually produce this thing that they are the originators of." --- So is there any way to participate in the "clean girl" trend without borderline culturally appropriating or reinforcing clean vs. dirty stereotypes? Absolutely, Dr. Miles suggests. Rather than calling it the “clean girl aesthetic,” she suggests simply calling it “the regular girl:” She makes effortless styling look put together. She doesn’t need to rock a glamorous blowout or an over-the-top outfit to look expensive. What Carrie Bradshaw once called “[ghetto gold for fun](https://www.goodfeed.com/TheLiberalLeo/story/don-t-call-it-ghetto-gold?ref=tawnymagazine.com)” is the jewelry we inherited from our foremothers to maintain some sort of financial and economic independence. "This is just regular for us,” says Dr. Miles. “And there's nothing wrong with being regular." As I write this, I could be considered playing into the “clean girl” aesthetic: rocking my thick black hair in a claw clip and adorning my body with gold jewelry while rocking sweats. To me, that’s just how I roll out of bed. There’s no TikTok tutorial or shopping guide to be shared. **So go ahead, rock your slicked-back buns, gold hoops, and overpriced lip gloss, but don’t deem yourself “clean” or “aesthetic” for doing so.**