Glow up culture, dissected

Why glow up culture is problematic and how to transform in a wholesome way

You might’ve felt the latest pressure of having a lockdown glow up, or seen the many articles attempting to normalize the lockdown glow down. 

I was skeptical at first, but in hindsight I did experience a glow down during the last few months. I relapsed into bad coping mechanisms and intense social anxiety. I struggled with a new mental health diagnosis, stress eating and almost complete isolation. I was suddenly back in my hometown, hiding in an empty apartment. My only interactions were the grocery store cashier and a good friend who checked on me once a week.

Sufficed to say that now, a year later, I wanted to glow up into a fuller self. Or at least glow back to my pre-pandemic self.  I was vaccinated and ready to go back to living life, but my body and anxiety weren’t ready at all.

Cue Glow up content. 

A glow-up is essentially the internet’s version of the makeover montage. It’s about changing your appearance but also working towards being more productive. Watching someone glow up is the opposite of schadenfreude. You feel a sense of inspiration and kinship with the creator.

There are different types of glow ups, from more superficial ones, like a 30 day glow up challenge, or long term ones, that involve a spiritual and emotional transformation. 

A glow up is in concept very attractive, either to watch or to actually go through since as humans we’re psychologically wired to constantly transform and improve. It’s also pretty addicting to watch, the same way self help books can become addicting.

When we relate to the main character, or the person on our screen, we want to see them glow up. It isn’t explicitly said, but we the audience are supposed to know that they were a good and deserving person all along. In some way, they just needed a little push, because people will judge a book by it’s cover. 

“One of the reasons we love a good makeover montage is because it is in part a wish fulfillment.” – Mina Le

It’s the story of the underdog, someone who was beautiful on the inside and capable all along. It says to you – you can be this person too. You have the potential to be great and literally glow from the inside out.

In preparation for this piece, I tested some of TikTok’s glow up tips on myself. At first, the whole project seemed really exciting. I planned a strict workout routine and prepared for a whole month of only eating healthy, Instagram-worthy foods. But for a number of reasons, these standards were hard to maintain.

It might not work for everybody, but here’s how I finally got rid of the unhealthy expectations I set up for myself, and found the first steps to a more wholesome, spiritual glow up.

It’s time to dissect glow up culture.

The appeal of internet glow ups is radical self care. A full stop and a new beginning, where you can at last only focus on bettering yourself. 

But many glow up accounts pages are abandoned after the first few days of the challenge. Creators start out hopeful, listing their motivations and asking viewers to join them by following. It’s easier when you’re not alone. 

The reason glow up challenges might not work is probably similar to why 90% of people who sign up for a gym membership in January quit after a few months. Starting is somehow the easy part. The hard part is being consistent, and showing up for yourself every day. 

But glowing up is more than just working out: it’s self-care regiments, weight loss journeys, spiritual awakenings and new found confidence. A productive and instagrammable lifestyle. Or, as the newest transformation trend summarizes: ‘becoming that girl’. 

That girl originated on Pinterest, as a specific aesthetic lifestyle. Expensive skin care, effortlessly styled hair, business casual and healthy, beautiful food. She’s happy, focusing on herself. Working out in expensive gear and building her empire. I find it important to note that that girl is usually white. And rich. And she looks like a model. (She’s an actual model).

She’s the one who has her life perfectly in order. She travels, she lives in New York or Paris, she wears pearls and flower bead rings. She works in a cafe and her life is basically a movie. She’s the main character, and she’s a little obsessed with skin care. Seriously, why are there so many face masks?

None of these aesthetic boards tell you that this lifestyle is not financially realistic for most of us. No one has time to live like this. And it’s cruel to maintain this standard. There are glow up courses out there literally advertised as “How to become prettier in one month” or  “I spent 1500 to not be ugly LOL”. 

Then there’s the “real” glow-up, where you don’t do it to prove others wrong, and you do it solely for yourself. 

But when did we start holding ourselves up to such high standards?

Though the glow up challenge is a fairly recent addition to internet culture, most of the beautifying stereotypes we see today can be credited to its predecessor, the makeover montage

You most likely remember this type of montage from “girly” movies of the late 90s and early 2000s: Princess diaries, Clueless, Miss Congeniality, Mean girls, The Devil wears Prada etc.

The main character usually starts out looking a bit messy or simply standing out because her style is not mainstream. She has glasses and curly hair, and she doesn’t pay much attention to her makeup or clothes. She’s then strapped to a chair (in some cases quite literally), while a team of friends or stylists work on fixing her so-called flaws.

At the end of the makeover montage, she emerges as a brand new person. Straight hair, contact lenses, makeup and a whole new wardrobe. This plot device often serves as a way to give the character everything they ever wanted. Their crush finally notices them, they fall in love and get married, they move up the social ladder and obtain the job of their dreams.

“Male validation is often tied into this cinema glow-up“

Makeover montages are usually portrayed as positive and transformative for the character, but they can also go wrong, underlying some pretty sexist tropes. After her transformation, Cady from Mean Girls becomes just as shallow as the antagonists, as if the lipgloss and pink clothes somehow went to her head. In Pretty Woman, Vivian, a sex worker played by Julia Roberts, gets a makeover just so she can be saved by a rich man who appears out of nowhere and falls in love with her.

In her video essay titled “we’ve outgrown the Ugly Duckling Transformation”, fashion commentator Mina Le expands on this topic:

“Male validation is often tied into this cinema glow-up. Notice the focus on the shocked men in these scenes, rather than the narrative focusing on how the woman feels, which would’ve been better. 

“[The camera] goes straight to the man and his reaction. I feel like these sequences get into girls’ heads. Whispering to them, ‘Hey don’t you wish you were her? If you looked like her, boys would turn their heads for you too’. There are so many examples of girls going through the transformation sequence just to literally get a boyfriend. The physical transformation is also used as this necessary means to gain confidence.”

And while some of these tropes didn’t age well, the main concept seems to still be ingrained in our collective psyche. If you interact with the glow up side of TikTok, a good amount of that content is the result of seeking external validation and even revenge. 

Trends like “Remember when you called me ugly” and “Last time people saw you in school vs now” show that in some cases, glowing up is just going through puberty. Which means there’s a lot more pressure on teenagers to glow up, and a lot of this rhetoric is being marketed towards teenage girls.

And though beauty standards have changed since the early 2000s, the return of Y2k and low rise jeans also brought back the romanticization of eating disorders – which is ironic, and infuriating.

As a teenager who survived the unfiltered era of Tumblr (seriously, there used to be a whole side of Tumblr dedicated to eating disorders) I never thought I would see thigh gaps and flat stomachs being romanticized again – but the same content is now available on TikTok, ten years later. 

Which means we’re not working hard enough to uproot these beauty standards. 

Content warning: eating disorder portrayal

There are no statistics measuring the exact post glow up beauty standards, but a lot of this content is centered on looking skinnier and more feminine: straight or styled hair, dewey makeup, eyelash extensions, acrylic nails, designer clothes or outfits that subscribe to a particular internet aesthetic. Also having a smaller nose, fuller lips, clear skin and an hourglass figure while still being skinny. 

The toxic side of glow up culture is also on Pinterest. It’s called “fits for when I’ll be skinny”. And it’s a perfect illustration of why the promise of the glow up can actually hold you back instead of helping you grow.

Saying  “I’ll be back when I’m skinny” is concerning. It tells you that you can’t enjoy life until you glow up. You don’t look good enough to go to the gym. You can’t wear the clothes you like, they’re not for people like you. You can’t have the group of friends you wish for, or go to the school you like, because you just don’t fit there yet. That is of course a lie, but the fear of not belonging drives all of this. 

The problem is, some of these features are quite literally not real. Modifying your body is becoming more and more normalized, and we’re getting so used to celebrities and influencers getting cosmetic surgery, that it’s easy to forget that normal people don’t look like that.

Youtuber Jordan Theresa explores this in one of her videos: “Let’s be honest. We don’t follow that many average people on social media. The only average people we follow are people we know. We either follow influencers or celebrities. And because we’re seeing so many transformations, we are starting to think that it’s the norm. But it’s not normal to transform that much.” 

“This isn’t normal, because not everyone is rich. I think people forget how much money goes into celebrities just looking good. They probably have a dietitian, a personal trainer, a dermatologist, a make-up artist, a stylist. And that’s not an average person’s life, so we shouldn’t expect ourselves to be able to transform the way influencers do when they start making money. [The way] celebrities upkeep their good looks- it’s because they’re not normal people, they’re rich.” 

As Jordan points out, none of the physical features people are trying to glow up from are even ugly to begin with, but for someone out there, your glow up is good business.

It’s the glow up industrial complex, influencers and make up brands, fitness gurus and countless self help courses that promise to deliver the new you in exchange for money.

To make matters worse, a lot of glow up content is just a reiteration of the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. Which ignores the mental health aspects of glowing up, or glosses over them with toxic positivity, only putting more pressure on you.

A month ago, when I started my experiment, I thought I could try all this, just to see how it feels, but I couldn’t even carry on with it. Not only because it was physically exhausting, but also because it felt very disingenuous. To uproot everything and change my entire lifestyle overnight was unrealistic – which isn’t surprising.

There are countless articles out there warning against the perils of glow-up culture. But even after dissecting everything that went wrong with these trends, I still think glow ups are, in theory, a good thing. Maybe we’re just going at it the wrong way.

I wanted to dig more into another side of Youtube, that of wholesome glow up content.

Leah is a product designer and youtube creator from Montreal. She regularly posts chapters from her glow-up diaries. A series where she tries out different routines, documenting the healing powers of traditional chinese medicine, eating intuitively and journaling. 

This side of glow up culture differs greatly from the “how to get pretty in one month’ alternative. 

Many creators like Leah advocate for a lifestyle glow up, prioritizing your mental health and being in tune with your body. 

It’s definitely the longer path to glowing up, but this still wasn’t enough for me. 

Sure, watching this type of content is inspiring, and it feels productive – because spending time on your growth is never time lost – but it’s not the same as going through these experiences yourself. After the video ends, I feel aesthetically inspired by Leah’s video. I think about buying plants, buying nourishing food, and the joy that would come from decorating my own apartment.

But then I remember I don’t currently have this kind of money to spend. One way or another, it feels like self development is tightly knit to economic factors. From big decisions, like investing in your learning, all the way to smaller ones, including having enough disposable time and income to care for yourself.

Plants, candles, air diffusers, crystals, essential oils, and overpriced green tea are all part of the same category of products that require disposable income. And buying a whole new lifestyle for yourself doesn’t sound like the right answer.

So let’s say you skip all that. You work out at home. You get by without therapy or books. You journal your way out of depression or generational trauma. You meditate every day and heal yourself into a self-sufficient permanent state of self-love. Still not realistic. 

Not because those are bad things, but because self-work requires a lot of mental and physical energy. And our world as it is right now simply doesn’t prioritize this kind of work. 

Cracking the code on loving yourself is definitely too large of a subject to discuss here, but in the middle of my experiment I found this quote by bell hooks, which summarizes things pretty well.

So, why is being consistent in your acts of self care so difficult, and why do so many of us struggle with new routines and unachievable standards. 

According to Irene Lyon, the answer to this is radical self acceptance. 

Irene is a nervous system therapist, specialized in somatic healing. Which means she believes we can heal our minds by working with our bodies, and regulating our nervous system out of fight or flight mode. 

In her video on self love meditations, Irene explains why the self-care content we’re so used to seeing won’t work for everyone: “I love the fact that people are putting themselves out there and offering advice, but the advice is just skimming over the surface.” 

“Things like making yourself a cup of tea, and sitting with that tea, taking warm baths, nurturing yourself, getting your hair done, getting a massage – there’s nothing wrong with these. However if you are someone who struggles with self love and self worth, I’m gonna bet that you tried those things and you’re still struggling.”

She equates that for a lot of people, problems with self love stem from an internalized sense of shame.

Growing up, if you’re not used to being accepted even when you make mistakes, you start criticizing yourself for every imperfection. Irene explains: “[It] tells you that there is a condition to love. And in order to be loved you have to be either perfect, or you have to get good grades, you can’t mess up or express your anger, rage, sadness.” 

“If it wasn’t something that you were taught, if it wasn’t something that was ingrained in not just your psyche, but in your body, cells, sensations –  I recommend that you find ways to work at gaining it back through very internal, body based ways that help you come to terms with the adversity, stress or trauma you might’ve gone through when you were young. When you had to perform and be perfect.” 

And while radical self acceptance might look different for everyone, this concept reminded me of a new trend I’ve been seeing on my FYP.

It’s called ‘This is what a real human looks like’ and it’s genuinely one of the most wholesome things populating my feed lately. In a way, it also restores my faith in Gen Z, because while there might be a lot of toxic glow up content out there, we’re starting to break down the unrealistic beauty standards we inherited. So, if you do decide to glow up, make sure you do it on your own terms.

Sources:

‘we’ve outgrown the Ugly Duckling Transformation’ by Mina Le

‘our obsession with glowing up’ by Jordan Theresa

‘4 day glow up: becoming my better self & apartment hunting update’ by Leah Wei

‘Do self love meditations work?’ by Irene Lyon