The ‘clean girl’ aesthetic is just expensive minimalism with a new name

So, I am sitting there watching a ‘get ready with me’ video — the kind where someone wakes up looking like they’ve been professionally lit — and she starts listing her ‘minimal’ routine. Forty-dollar tinted moisturizer. Sixty-dollar blush. Glazing serum that I had to Google because I’d never heard of it and it costs $98.

This is the clean girl. She owns three things but each thing costs the same as my light bill.

I don’t know why we collectively decided that expensive simplicity was somehow more virtuous than just… regular simplicity. But we did. And now we’ve got an entire generation of people feeling bad about themselves because their drugstore moisturizer isn’t giving them that ‘effortless’ glow.

What even IS the clean girl aesthetic, really?

The clean girl aesthetic is, at its core, minimalism that went to a private college. Slicked hair, gold hoops, skin that looks like you drink a gallon of water and have never once stress-eaten a sleeve of crackers over the sink. No clutter. No bold lip. Nothing loud.

It’s supposed to feel approachable. Natural. Like you just are this way.

But that’s where the lie lives.

Why does “natural” always cost a fortune?

The no-makeup makeup look — the cornerstone of the whole thing — requires more products than a full glam beat. You need a skin-prep serum, a tinted moisturizer with SPF, a cream blush, a brow gel, a clear gloss, a highlighter that goes “under the skin” (whatever that means), and something called a “glazing milk” that I’m pretty sure is just expensive water.

A 2023 breakdown by Refinery29 put the average “clean girl” starter kit at well over $350. And that’s before you get to the Laneige lip mask that everyone has suddenly decided is a personality.

Drugstore versions exist, sure. But the content never features them. The algorithm doesn’t serve you the girl with the $7 Maybelline tinted moisturizer. It serves you the girl with the La Mer.

Is this just minimalism with better PR?

Honest answer? Yes. A hundred percent yes.

Minimalism — the “own less, live more” movement — got roasted for being a wealthy person’s hobby dressed up as enlightenment. You know, the guy with $4,000 of “intentional” furniture telling you that stuff doesn’t matter. That backlash was deserved and the discourse was good.

Clean girl is the beauty version of that exact thing. It’s the same premise: restraint is a virtue. But restraint, it turns out, is a luxury product.

The difference is that minimalism at least admitted it was an aesthetic. Clean girl wraps itself in wellness language — I just take care of my skin, I just eat well, I just — and makes it sound like anyone who doesn’t look this way simply isn’t trying hard enough. That part’s worse, actually.

Okay but some people genuinely just look like that, right?

Yeah, some people do. Good bones are real. Great skin genetics are real. But here’s the thing — the aesthetic isn’t about those people. The aesthetic is a content format. It’s a product delivery system with good lighting.

The girl with naturally perfect skin isn’t making GRWM videos listing her routine because her routine is “wash face, go to sleep.” That doesn’t monetize.

The content exists to sell you the gap between what you look like and what she looks like. That gap is the product. And closing it, according to every video in this genre, costs about $400 and a fifteen-step “minimal” routine.

The strongest argument for it — and why I still disagree

Here’s where I’ll be fair: some people push back and say the clean girl aesthetic actually reduced their spending because it got them off the “more is more” hamster wheel of buying seventeen mascaras and a different highlight for every season.

That’s a real thing. Buying fewer, better products can be smarter long-term. I get it.

But that argument only holds if you already had $400 to swap out your whole routine for “better” products. For a lot of people, the many-cheap-things approach isn’t excess — it’s just what’s in the budget. Telling someone their $8 foundation is the problem isn’t minimalism advice. It’s just classism with good cheekbones.

So what do we actually do with this?

Nothing dramatic. I’m not telling you to throw out your Tatcha or feel bad for loving a good serum. Products aren’t the villain here.

But I do think we owe it to ourselves to call the aesthetic what it is — a marketing category, not a moral stance. You are not less put-together because your moisturizer didn’t go to Goop. You are not less clean, less minimal, less anything because your version of low-maintenance actually costs less money.

And also — and this is the thing nobody says — visible stuff isn’t the enemy. I’ve said this before about home organization, and I’ll say it about beauty too: the idea that having less visible evidence of your life is inherently more sophisticated is a really weird hill to die on.

Some of us have lip liner from 2019 and a Neutrogena cleanser and we look completely fine. But what do I know.

The clean girl aesthetic is aspirational content dressed up as a lifestyle. It’s fine to like the look. It’s fine to buy the gloss. I’m not the beauty police.

But I’m not going to sit here and act like this thing is accessible when the whole premise is built on products most people can’t casually throw in a cart. Call it what it is — expensive, specific, and not actually effortless — and then do whatever you want with that information.

For me, that means buying the drugstore dupe and not feeling weird about it for even one second.

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