Let me paint a little picture for you: It’s 8 p.m. on a Friday. After a long week of monotonous lectures, pages of reading and brain-crushing exams, it’s finally time to take a well-deserved break. Clothes are strewn across the floor, my makeup’s half-done and there’s the distant sound of “Mr. Brightside” coming from the hallway. I hear the commotion of my roommates running around outside your door, exchanging clothes and discussing the evening’s itinerary. I bask in the pure, beautiful chaos.
This is a pretty accurate description of what my house looks like each weekend: five other girls and me running around like maniacs, screaming along to Taylor Swift and preparing for the night ahead. It’s a beautiful kind of crazy that I surely will be nostalgic for after I graduate. In fact, for me, the most beautiful thing about going out with my friends is not the music, the drunk selfies or the funny stories, but the extremely long process beforehand — the getting ready part. There may be nothing I love more than sitting down in my room, picking out my outfit and putting on my makeup, all while surrounded by my best friends. It’s an irreplaceable piece of womanhood that I wish I could bottle up and carry around with me forever, and as it turns out, the internet feels the same way.
Over the past several months, the phrase “Get Ready with Me” has become a staple on my TikTok For You page, as well as many others’. “Get ready with me to go to dinner,” “Get ready with me to go to class” and “Get ready with me to break up with my boyfriend” (a strange yet empowering version of the trend) are just a few of the many videos that have been circulating TikTok. Creators big and small prop up their phones and film themselves doing their skincare routine and putting on their makeup, all while chatting with their followers. Where are they going? Who are they going with? What products are they using? It feels oddly reminiscent of a FaceTime call with a friend, and may just be one of the easiest yet most successful genres to post on the app. Creators with huge platforms — such as Meredith Duxbury and Alix Earle — have made a living from posting these videos, and other creators whose platforms have literally nothing to do with makeup or hair have begun posting them as well. They have become a staple on a digital platform with a huge range of content, and their popularity does not appear to be waning.
This isn’t exactly surprising. It’s easy to understand the appeal of GRWM videos. They are repetitive, informal clips that do not require much effort from the creator or the audience. When someone sees a GRWM pop up in their feed, they know exactly what is coming, perhaps even down to which products the creator is going to use. In a way, this is oddly comforting. Listening to your favorite creator go through the same makeup routine they go through every single day is almost soothing, like returning to a favorite book or movie that you know backward and forwards. I would even argue that GRWMs may just be some of the best content on TikTok right now. Anytime they come up on my For You page, I watch the whole thing through, without fail. Though they may seem boring or repetitive, I totally and completely love them, and here’s why you should too.
Firstly, GRWMs normalize putting your fresh-out-of-bed face on blast, a rarity in a digital world that demands physical perfection far too often. In a way, they are powerful tools of social change, working to peel back the aesthetic layer of Instagram and TikTok in order to reveal a social media that accepts a more casual presentation of one’s self. This is especially important considering that apps like Instagram and TikTok have been shown to worsen body image — and in turn mental health — of their users, particularly young women. Scrolling through your feed and seeing your friend’s brand-new photo dump is the perfect recipe for some unhealthy and unnecessary social comparison, something that can easily worsen anxiety. GRWMs are taking a crucial step to lessen this pressure and make social media casual again, a change that is long overdue.
Even so, the casual format of the videos is not what I love most about GRWMs. The real reason I can never bring myself to scroll past them lies in the fact that they are a piece of digital media that openly celebrates and encourages femininity, something that is becoming increasingly rare on and off the internet.
One thing our society loves more than anything is to hate on the very things that women and feminine-presenting individuals love. Do you like Taylor Swift? According to the anti-Swifties, you’re nothing more than a crazy teenage girl who loves to listen to substandard breakup music. Do you love to fangirl over your favorite TV shows and actors? You’re just a boy-crazy, naive girl who needs to come back to reality. Do you love to buy new clothes and makeup products? You’re way too shallow and materialistic.
And the list goes on. Even the very thing this article is about — GRWMs — have garnered their fair share of mocking and jokes, much of it directed at the creators who film themselves on a day-to-day basis. Many have taken to TikTok to imitate these creators. While much of it is in good fun, mocking a trend like this inadvertently labels the women and girls who post or enjoy these videos as shallow women who are obsessed with their physical appearance. It shouldn’t be too difficult to identify the problem here: there is so much internalized misogyny in our society that it causes us to immediately despise, mock and laugh at anything that women love, hence why GRWMs and the positive following that they have accumulated plays such an important role. These videos hand the microphone back over to girls and women, giving them the opportunity to express themselves openly while being celebrated by other women for doing so.
In fact, the very building blocks that make up these videos (skincare products, makeup, hair products, etc.) are associated with womanhood and feminine gender expression. As creators go on long rants describing their favorite concealers, blushes and skincare products, their words act as a source of validation, telling the young girls and women that flood their comment sections that loving to put on makeup or being “girly” is not something to be embarrassed about — regardless of what society has said thus far. These videos are not just another form of content to mindlessly scroll past on your For You page, but a sign of comradery and sisterhood among women that celebrates femininity. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful than that.
Daily Arts Writer Rebecca Smith can be reached at rebash@umich.edu.