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-

lieved that our morality and whether we are “virtuous” is based on our actions and experiences — we can grow into virtue.

We grow into this virtuous role by participating in self-optimization through moral education and development and finding role models.

Humans have always been preoccupied with the self-centered idea of examining ourselves and asking if we’re good people with good ethics and morals.

“That girl” is all about looking at our lives and trying to fix the problems. It’s about pushing out the ugly and bad parts of our lives to embrace a standard of perfection, which isn’t what becoming a virtuous person is. “That girl” isn’t a virtuous person.

Her life doesn’t exist outside of the vacuum of social media. She isn’t a substantive person because her “perfect” life is entirely built on aesthetics.

“It’s an unrealistic expectation. Obviously it’s important to have a healthy lifestyle but I think it’s about balance and not about always being perfect,” senior Julianna Seymour said.

The popularity of “that girl” pushes this new standard of what a virtuous person is. The new virtuous characteristics are the characteristics of that girl: being pretty and skinny with a Peloton and a green juice.

She’s acting as this role model for other people to gain virtue. “There are definitely times where I feel like I need to document my healthy routines in order for people to know I’m doing them just like ‘that girl,’” junior Molly Morouse said.

“That girl” is entirely based on aesthetics, and therefore defining her as a virtuous person defines virtue and health as having one look, her “look.”

It narrows the scope of morality to skinny, white, productive, standardly beautiful people. “It’s kind of unrealistic having everything be perfect where you’re always working out, always eating your greens, and never eating anything sugary,” Julianna said.

She’s not a virtuous person; she’s the epitome of spiritual materialism. She’s defining her success and worth by material accomplishment in the context of her “glow-up.”

Being a virtuous person can’t be defined in a 15-second TikTok. Optimizing yourself isn’t editing ourselves in such a way that we fit the one, limited idea of perfection. Looking for ways to improve ourselves and our lifestyles isn’t bad.

An issue arises when we plagiarize our desired lifestyles from a role model that isn’t real.

We imitate and seek out the life of an unattainable, impossible ideal of perfection which falsely labels itself as virtue.

Is this really how we want to define our worth—always grasping onto the newest trend of self-help?

If you aren’t that girl, don’t worry. If you don’t get 10,000 steps a day, drink lemon water every morning, or have an impossibly small dog, don’t worry—you’re not a bad person, and you’re certainly not unhealthy.