If social media is to be believed (always!) then a lot of people wake up every morning looking extremely buff. Seriously - unlike me, they apparently don't need to scrub their face for 45 seconds before they vaguely resemble a human, before slathering on creams and concealers, moaning softly all the while. Oh - wait! News just in. The #ijustwokeuplikethis hashtag isn't true.
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The idea of taking a picture of yourself wearing make-up - and then pretending you're not - is odd; a downright denial, which espouses the idea that being 'natural' is best. It's part of a bigger problem at the moment where it's become cool not to care (or the assumption, as pedalled rather misguidedly like Beyonce, that upon waking, you will look flawless.) To pretend that everything - your job, your looks - is just down to the planets aligning and not, say, some bloody hard work. Its origins, of course, came from our desire to essentially look like Gisele. With her natural tan and her tawny tangled hair, dropping soundbytes like perfect rabbit droppings about how delicious and easy childbirth is, Gisele is the definition of 'effortlessness'.
Ditto, the editors who always garner the most attention at Paris Fashion Week, for their undone aesthetic and casual mode of dress. It may look effortless; but cultivating a strong personal style is a fairly obvious upshot of being a fashion editor - in the same way that you would expect an accountant to ace the maths part of the pub quiz. In order to rise to that position of prominence, too, somewhere along the line, effort has been made - if not specifically in the cosmetics they don or the supercool shoes they sport, then in their employment trajectory. It'd be salient for us to remember that.
Except for Cara - because it's patently obvious when she has just woken up like that - it worries me that young girls are growing up thinking that they can't aspire to be something, they have to just 'be'. And if they aren't born, well, as 'be' (or Bey) then they might as well give up. The '2cool2care' attitude of girls like Alexa - she claims to find the perfect outfit just through blindly pawing at her floordrobe - is now championed as the norm.
#ijustwokeuplikethis is about so much more than a bare-faced selfie and un-brushed hair. It's cultivating the impossible dream: where girls think that they should look like #ijustwokeuplikethis lover Kendall Jenner, whilst not being allowed to put in any effort. It's the urge to suppress your effort, in fear of embarrassment, that's so worrying (and seems more prominent in the self-conscious south of the country, than the north.) This hashtag will have no positive bearing on women. Aside from a very brief lol or two, all it adds to society is bullshit and faux casual navel-gazing.
Picture: British Vogue