Who Is “THAT” Girl? Is “that” girl a role model and an example of what we should emulate in our own lives, or is she just the latest iteration of an abstract, purely aesthetic ideal? WORDS and PAGE by HANNA MASRI
Everyone wants to be her. They want her food, skincare routine, Alo yoga sets, morning workouts, and daily $7 matcha lattes. She’s beautiful; she’s the epitome of health; she has her life together. Who is she? “That girl.” She’s permeated our TikTok feeds and saturated our Pinterests bringing toxic positivity back into the trend cycle under a different name. In general, to be “that girl,” you get up early to workout or journal while drinking by some green beverage. After a shower and a “clean” beauty and skincare routine, she makes herself some avocado toast (or health-food equivalent) for breakfast and starts her productive day filled with note-taking on her iPad. Followers and supporters praise the movement for making health and wellness trendy. That the trend provides a space for participants to become the healthiest version of themselves. But in actuality seeking out the life
of “that girl” is just the latest substance-lacking iteration of self-optimization. “That girl’s” life is portrayed as the life we all should want in order to be the best version of ourselves: productive workers who fit western standards of beauty. The life depicted on TikTok and Pinterest is just a snapshot of what these women’s lives are actually like. This idea of bettering oneself can be traced back to Aristotelean virtue ethics. This branch of philosophy is based on Aristotle’s theories of character and virtue, in which your inner states drive your actions. Virtue ethics champion the idea of acting ethically with intrinsic motivation, not because of external rules or regulations. In short, being a good person means that you have good values and therefore can make good, ethical, virtuous actions. Aristotle disputed whether we are born being an innately good or bad. He was an empiricist who be-
