Where do popular wellness aesthetics actually come from?
Kayli Boyle is a social media hair queen. A growing creator with over one million combined followers on the holy trifecta of social media: TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. She posts weekly on achieving trendy hair, makeup, and nail looks. At the end of her ‘get ready with me’ videos, her hair is always styled with loose bouncy curls and fluffy voluminous layers framing her face. In other words, the ideal 90s blowout rivalling that of Cher from Clueless, Topanga of Boy Meets World or new-to-fame Swedish designer and Pinterest darling Matilda Djerf.
What’s her secret? Well, watching her how-to content, it’s clear that chief among few is hair oil… and lots of it. Rosemary for the roots, oil for the middle and ends, as well as drops of it daily after washing to keep your hair smooth throughout the week. These videos have gained traction as other viewers comment and duet with their own results in trying out oiling. One TikTok duet, though, stands out among the fray. “I could never, my hair would hate me if I did that,” reacted one girl, “I would be so scared to do that.”
This response—one of utter shock, disbelief, even fear—to hair oiling is not unique to this video or creator. The practice has been common among women of colour for millenia. In India, specifically, the tradition traces back over 5000 years. Moreover, women of colour have been marginalised for the practice in Western society for a long time. In 2016, the very practice of hair oiling led a Black mom from Chicago to receive a note from her daughter’s teacher asking her to “apply … lightly” because “children were complaining that her hair ‘stinks.’” The notion of difference—how non-white beauty practices such as hair oiling function on bodies of colour—has led to the Western world to view those practices as taboo or unsanitary and to dismiss the people sporting them as unclean.
In late August of last year, model Hailey Bieber posted a TikTok of herself posing before a mirror. “Ready for all the fall things including brownie glazed lips,” she captioned it. Promptly, the internet freaked out. A writer from Allure gushed over how “the lips [were] so shiny they could almost be a mirror,” before highlighting products for readers to recreate the look, which complexly consisted of brown liner and lip gloss. In response, many Black and South Asian creators criticised how Bieber was heralded as an innovator of beauty trends. Staples of her present aesthetic—slicked back hair, ‘brownie’ lips, gold hoops and necklaces—have been worn by those in the Black and Latina community for a long time. However, on these women, the look has historically been stigmatised. A 2019 Time magazine article about New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘unlikely rise’ captures this struggle, inserting that, “Ocasio-Cortez has told friends she learned early on that wearing hoop earrings and nameplate necklaces was fine in the Bronx, but she wouldn’t be taken seriously if she wore them to a job interview.” This look which people on TikTok dub as “slick and shiny” today, is trending as part of the larger ‘clean girl aesthetic.’ This ‘model off duty’ trend, as it is widely known on TikTok, promotes the style creators who resemble Bieber. That is, predominantly white, thin, and able-bodied women. Where wider society views these beauty practices on bodies of colour as ‘unclean’ or a reason to not be taken seriously, on white bodies, it is seen as innovative or trendy. The clean girl aesthetic is yet another beauty aesthetic that is glamorised without regard for the original communities behind the aesthetic and their experiences of marginalisation as a result of it.
As discussion of at-home self-care has grown more prominent in recent years, so too has buzz around a new favourite celebrity skincare tool: the Gua Sha. Praised by those such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Elle Macpherson, and even Justin Bieber, the tool quickly gained traction across all sorts of internet platforms. Many influencers quickly conceptualised it as a natural facelift or non-Western botox. In actuality, the Gua Sha is a flat crystal stone with rounded edges used for facial massage practice in ancient Chinese medicine. The name itself is a reference to “scraping” away “redness” by gently moving the edge of the tool in upward strokes across the face. Like hair oiling, use of the Gua Sha traces back thousands of years to the first millennia, to alleviate pain, fevers, and other illnesses. While the technique has many positive health benefits, one Gua Sha practitioner was quoted in NPR as criticising how some celebrities’ claims about the practice are simply untrue. “The whitewashing of Gua Sha is leading to the distortion of the practice. And this harms its credibility as a legitimate form of healing,” she explained. The co-option of the Gua Sha is an example of how cultural beauty practices steeped in rich history can be misappropriated by white celebrities. In the case of the Gua Sha, this trend-setting is fundamentally harmful as it disconnects practices from their roots, which jeopardises its efficacy and undermines its integrity as a practice based in Chinese medicine.
Times change and so do aesthetics. There is a tendency on social media platforms, especially on TikTok, to move through practices facilitating these looks rather rapidly. Hailey Bieber wore ‘doughnut lips,’ used a Gua sha for smooth skin, and rosemary oil for hair growth. Seen, bought, tried, and moved on. However, many of today’s trends are not just a fun Sunday night ‘hack’ to try and toss out. Beauty practices—like hair oiling, donut lips, or the use of the Gua Sha—have deep-rooted cultural significance and history. They may have gained traction on the body of a popular white figure, but they were worn and used by communities of colour first, even if they were dismissed when they first did it.
