“That Girl” is a trend most prominent on Tik Tok and Pinterest, but has slowly begun making its way to sites like YouTube. “That Girl” is very in touch with her inner self, is successful, productive, healthy, and happy.

The trend promotes a healthy productive lifestyle and encourages others to take on the lifestyle as well. “That Girl” meditates, manifests, and likely has an interest in crystals as well. She wakes up early, makes her bed, eats a healthy breakfast, drinks lots of water, walks, takes her vitamins, and keeps a consistent skincare routine. Some of her healthy foods consist of avocado toast, fruits & vegetables, yogurt, salad, smoothies, and almonds. She is always on top of things with her planner and to-do lists. She spends her time reading and journaling instead of scrolling and her space is always clean and neat. Her skin is always clean, moisturized, and healthy and her teeth are a beautiful bright white. She walks and exercises often. Her outfits often consist of sweaters, jeans, crop tops, blazers, bralets, matching sets, earth tones, and neutral colors. Being positive is always important to her so she always practices positive self-talk and words of affirmation.

The main purposes of the “That Girl” trend are to promote overall health and wellness, being the most optimized version of yourself, self-fulfillment, achieving goals, having your life together, living your best life, and pushing yourself to become a better person. She is essentially all of the best qualities in a person.

Some of the popular “That Girl” videos consist of morning routines, how to be “That Girl”, becoming “That Girl”, what I eat in a day, motivation, hauls, must-haves, and healthy habits. The videos are motivating, upbeat, and productive. Some popular “That Girl” creators are Olivia Eve Shabo, Kaylie Stewart, Maggie Certosimo, and Natalia Seliger.

“That Girl” content is very motivating to watch and may often make you want to change your life to become as happy and bright as they seem. I, myself am guilty of binging “That Girl” videos and trying to develop a “That Girl” routine that I often cannot keep.

The trend may seem very pure and helpful but there are a lot of underlying issues with it. For example, the “That Girl” trend has been called out for promoting disordered eating because a lot of the “what I eat in a day” videos consist of girls eating very small meals, often lunch will be only a smoothie or small bowl of almonds. The trend focuses a lot on eating healthy as well, promoting an entirely different eating disorder called Orthorexia, which consists of being obsessed with healthy foods, and only eating healthy foods, to the point where it becomes genuinely harmful.

If you search “That Girl” you often only find videos of skinny white girls. The lack of inclusion in the trend is overwhelming. I have yet to see a single person of color, disabled person, plus-size person, non-binary person, or man. It is extremely discouraging and disappointing to see.

The “That Girl” trend is also very unrealistic. “That Girl” creators almost always show the ups in their life, but never the downs which creates an unrealistic depiction of what somebody’s life should be like. The trend is free of any honesty or unique perspectives and most of the meals, products, clothes, etc that are present in the trend are extremely expensive, which creates the illusion that you can only be successful if you have money.

To change some of the common issues in the trend creators should start normalizing negative days and showing the downsides that come with the lifestyle along with the upsides. The community should also become more welcoming to POC, trans people, non-binary people, men, disabled people, plus-size people, etc.

I don’t think there are intentional malicious intentions with this trend but I definitely think that once somebody speaks up about clear problems in the trend, creators should work to make things better.