‘The ubiquity of photography has altered everyday life. It not only changes how we see the everyday but how we live’. Discuss this contention.
What makes us uniquely human is what is socially constructed, and photography's ubiquity in a social media dependent world allows algorithms to govern these aspects. This essay will use the clean girl aesthetic as a case study for how this process is able to alter our worldviews and make changing them significantly harder.
Every month, 2 billion people actively use TikTok - the leading demographic being US young adults (Resourcera, 2026). Its constant stream of short-form content is able to circulate fashion and lifestyle trends with a short life span of virality. This has led to an oversaturation of visual aesthetics and subcultural labels that has sparked its own field of online discourse (Chronically Online, 2024), and academic investigation into microtrends (Hall, 2025). One of the more enduring aesthetics is 'the clean girl': characterized by minimal self-expression with exhausting intentionality and care for one's makeup, hair style, skincare, and expensive looking clothing. #cleangirl has over 1.7 million videos on TikTok (TikTok, 2026), which is the primary platform where the identity and community was formed. Features like TikTok slideshows are often used to collage photos together, and tie them to a lifestyle that promotes the pursuit of health (for example see figure 1).
Figure 1.
clean girl lifestyle vibes🤍✨ #cleangirl #aesthetic #pinterest #cleangirlaesthetic #glowup #foryou #viral
Note. From TikTok by @dreamlife5609, https://www.tiktok.com/@dreamlife5609/photo/7547725580809080069?image_index=5&q=clean%20girl%20aesthetics&t=1778389546761. In the public domain.
YouTuber Daisy Louisa's video on how to get the clean girl aesthetic (daisy louisa, 2023) is one of the more popular long-form videos detailing how she achieves her look. She recommends clothes, jewellery, and perfumes to buy, alongside espousing great care in one's appearance. This culture of consumption embedded in the aesthetic has garnered substantial critique. One of the most important foundations for TikTok's popularity and 'influencer culture' as a whole is it's thriving influencer economy (Kashyap, 2026). Creators and brands have a symbiotic relationship on TikTok, and the 'TikTok shop' feature provides systemic endorsement of treating TikTok like a glorified ad reel. In essence, brands will do partnerships with creators, creators will create videos promoting products, and earn a commission fee on every product sold. Even without using the TikTok shop feature, brands can pay creators via contracts. This system underpins many aesthetics, as creators hop on trends to advertise and sell popular products as tools for self-expression. Their photos become advertisements for the aesthetic and lifestyle, and users are able to participate through the creation and circulation of their own photos.
A critique in the form of a video by user madeleine.nvk (2025) links the clean girl aesthetic to ideals of self-control, patriarchal gender norms and ultimately fascist ideologies of female oppression. This critique, while informal and brief in a TikTok caption, is popular and echoes other online discourse surrounding the aesthetic (e.g. Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, 2024). It obtains some support but primarily backlash. Many commenters respond to this as an attack on girls who just like the look of simple clothes and make-up. It is considered an isolated activity, and many feel critique is mean-spirited. One commenter remarks it is ‘just an aesthetic’, but given the sheer presence and economic underpinnings, the continuities of associated behaviours like photography are worth investigating. American critic and writer Susan Sontag (1973) once wrote 'there is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera'. Sontag identified that the industrialization of photography - wherein the camera became highly accessible and eliminated the need for a distinction between amateurs and professionals - created a didactic ubiquity and passivism of photography. Her essay explores how industrialization has come further since Walter Benjamin's initial positing of this process, and that in the 70's it was now a method of constantly imposing social standards on the subject. It is through this process, Sontag argues, that the social uses of photography embedded in our culture produce a photography mentality, which subjects those around us to our own standards. The idea that the clean girl aesthetic is 'just an aesthetic' comes under scrutiny through this lens, as it teases out a worldview that both underpins and results from participating in the aesthetic.
One common convention of images under #cleangirl over multiple platforms is the collage style layout accompanied with mantras (see Figure 2).
Figure 2.
#aesthetic #cleangirl #cleangirlaesthetic #health #discipline #selfcare #selflove
Note. From Pinterest, by Hollie Victoria. https://au.pinterest.com/pin/844493676024216/. In the public domain.
Sontag's essay posits that subjective stylistic tastes in photography arose from the 'self-consciousness' photographers face when their skill is reduced to a social convention. In our era where photography has been industrialized further, the clean girl aesthetic can glamorize conventional beauty standards – their photography skill turned mundane social convention. Figure 2 particularly represents the idealized thin white body currently trending in lieu of a more looks focused collective consciousness, following the rise in popularity of relatively extreme behaviours in the name of beauty - like taking Ozempic and ‘looksmaxxing’ (Smith, 2025; Stokes, 2026). However, clean girls are able to transform it into an aesthetic of personal taste. Perhaps, this reaction is rooted in a self-consciousness at the lack of agency individual women have to fight oppressive beauty standards. However, the assumption of autonomy is central. Figure 2 shows mantras of self-control and discipline, espousing the agency women have in controlling their body through diet and exercise. This representation of the female body as an indicator of one’s character or success is nothing new to western wellness culture (Bak et al., 2023; Eberhardt, 2024). The aesthetic is not explicitly political or responding to social issues, and is rooted in the assumption women have ample agency they should be exercising by attaining luxury brands and an ideal body. The 'self-consciousness' driving the glamourization through Sontag's lens may instead be a result of the mundanity and necessity of daily rituals surrounding beauty, despite the amount of effort one has to go through to maintain the look. Indeed, the skin care industry has seen significant success in parallel to the rise of self-care content online (premium beauty news, 2022), reflecting the significant costs of these online aesthetics.
In another essay, Sontag (1973) claims we are all ‘image-junkies’, of aesthetic consumerism, constantly projecting our photography mentality to find something worthy of being photographed. To the clean girl on social media, the clean girl aesthetic is not 'just an aesthetic', but rather a system of beliefs surrounding the one’s bodily autonomy and femininity. Moreover, it means projecting these standards through vertical social comparison. This process implies a sort of ‘aggression’ and violence. Behaviours like dehumanization, which are especially observed in community settings, enable social cohesion in these cases regardless. Research from the field of social psychology has provided cross-culturally replicable evidence on dehumanization, as an innate behaviour observable from childhood (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014). Haslam's dual model of dehumanization (Haslam, 2006) outlines a broad spectrum of dehumanizing behaviours, including infrahumanization which covers the more implicitly dehumanizing acts. We either deny one's unique humanness, or their innate human nature. Uniquely human traits are those that arise from human society: like our refinement, morals, maturity, or grooming standards. These map on to the beauty standards defined by social media which are rewarded with social capitol (i.e. likes and follows) and a sense of community in being a ‘#cleangirl’. Typically, dehumanization is used as a coping strategy to lessen the cognitive load associated with transgressing the infrahumanized (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014). Critiquing the clean girl community identity may be productive in critiquing larger systems like the patriarchy or consumerism, but may be difficult for the clean girl to confront - threatening social cohesion. The process of infrahumanizing the other, that does not meet one’s photography mentality, can allow this to be circumvented because the other isn’t a clean girl and their unique humanness is denied. Infrahumanization can often entail not attributing the infrahuman’s actions to valid motivations – for they aren’t civil or mature enough – which can manifest in labelling critique as mean spirited against what is ‘just an aesthetic’. The comment 'why hate everyone has their own style' (madeleine.nvk, 2025), ignores the underlying world view, but it is okay because only the infrahuman other cares. Indeed, the relationship between photography and social media might just be impeding productive discourse.
Dominant female beauty conventions are greatly supported in online circulation and reproduction due to algorithmic favouritism and the microtrend environment. Hallinan & Striphas' (2016) analysis of The Netflix Prize conceptualizes how algorithms view and moderate human culture. They stress that as algorithms become ubiquitous with our culture, it is increasingly informed by how they analyse us – which is motivated to offer the most commercially successful product. Algorithms do not see our world and what makes us innately human. Instead, they more often see uniquely human traits and create matrices of commonality (Hallinan & Striphas, 2016). Paglen (2016) highlights that digital photographs are machine-readable, and this is really their primary purpose as images. This process allows the constant reification of the dominant hegemony of feminine conventional beauty standards through our photographs and their circulation online. How the clean girl is represented in collective consciousness would not exist in its current form without the image-based algorithms of social media. The rise of the clean girl aesthetic also parallels emerging internet trends of 'enshittification' (Birch, 2023) and the 'death of the creative internet' (Simpson & Semaan, 2025), wherein self-expression online has become more restricted and homogenized to maximize profit and appeal to the lowest common denominator consumer. Clean serif fonts, poppy sound effects and quick cuts alongside flattering lighting are integral to the clean girl aesthetic (e.g. adridiaries, 2025) - yet also represent what is perceived as 'good' professional looking editing (e.g. Kittle Team, 2026). Brands and influencers regardless of target demographic or product can aim for this 'polished' look and fortify the algorithmic identification of these traits as desirable. The clean girl aesthetic is an embedded standard of ideals, governing the vertical social comparison within many peoples’ photography mentalities. There have been many reincarnations of the clean, luxurious, feminine domesticity achieved through self-control and discipline: such as ‘Pilates princess’ (Likychoo, 2023) or ‘tomato girl’ (Lee, 2023) which reflect how the microtrend environment forces trends to constantly rebrand themselves to stay relevant. Online, these traits become identified as uniquely human, and are rarely able to be challenged.
British sociologist Stuart Hall (1997) stresses that the mere existence of the mainstream complicates the existence of the other - anyone or anything not represented as the mainstream. He uses a Black historical lens to analyse Black representations, and their unavoidable critiques, to focus on the mainstream’s inherent top-down power. Power will always have to radiate downwards which can produce new knowledge and practices - but these will always favourite the mainstream and reify it's perceived power. While no revolutionary knowledge and behaviour can be produced online, when it comes to algorithmically defined unique humanness, its ability to undermine critique relies on it taking place online. If the worldview of the clean girl is to be challenged, it will rely on action outside of the restrictive power dynamic of image-based social media. Due to societal dependence on social media, one feasible change may be systemic changes to these platforms rather than total avoidance. Lack of algorithmic transparency is an identified barrier that has gained growing concern. Costello et al. (2023) performed an investigation on the relationship between image-based social media and youth mental health, finding a clear positive correlation between increased use and clinically poor mental wellbeing. The study concludes by highlighting the difficulties in investigating causal relationships due to the ambiguity of algorithms. Schultz et al. (2025) investigate the dehumanizing nature of algorithms in the corporate space, and conclude that transparency and algorithmic ‘wokeness’ (being educated on algorithms and their functions) is imperative for productive human-algorithm interactions. While this is a niche environment, and based on human nature rather than uniqueness, the literature surveyed is broad in scope and this suggestion can extend to platform-user interactions. Platforms are currently not held appropriately accountable for the amount of influence they have in our daily lives, which has resulted in embedded standards of human uniqueness that are unsustainable long-term - yet cannot be challenged effectively. Schultz et al. (2025) identify that algorithmic transparency can better empower individuals to challenge algorithmic decisions. Algorithmic wokeness online may help people challenge the notion that their worldviews are ‘just an aesthetic’, and promote more productive discourse. The clean girl aesthetic is built on the foundation of the influencer culture and economy. Even if it is ‘just an aesthetic’, the inability for users online to effectively engage in discourse is a structural weakness of a system which does not appropriately respond to human behaviour. Changes like government regulations on algorithmic opacity and ethical standards, and encouraging education on emerging technologies like artificial intelligence as human made technology, may be a cumulative preventative measure against deteriorating online discourse.
Photography mentalities and dehumanization are implicitly violent, but fundamental parts of human nature that should be embraced - and inform our societal frameworks rather than be ignored. Inescapable oppressive body-surveillance, and gender norms rooted in misogyny persist in their current forms because of the relationship between photography and algorithms. While this influence over uniquely human traits can raise concerns of trans-humanism, algorithms are ultimately human made technology which can be regulated and have its stakeholders held accountable.
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