Thoughts, Vol. 3
Put your pocketbook down. You don't need to buy anything to be that girl.
Welcome to Thoughts, an element of Make It Make Sense, where I dissect a pop culture phenomenon using a health and wellness lens. If you like this post or the work I’m doing, consider a paid subscription to support the daily operation of this newsletter.
Finally, some words that mean things! Unless you’ve been on your Patrick Star tip, you’ve heard Renaissance. It’s fantastic work that showcases the depth of Beyoncé’s musical genius. And though I’ve been wearing it out, this is not an album review. There are writers far better at that than me, and I suggest you read them. Instead, I want to talk about how a song off the album returns a phrase commonly used in the wellness space to its original meaning: that girl.
I wrote this for Vox about the phrase:
“That girl” hasn’t strayed far from its original status as a way to hype up your girlfriends. But now, that badge of honor has morphed into a ubiquitous health and wellness archetype that panders to Western beauty ideals, especially on TikTok. (It’s also dominated by thin white women.) To date, the hashtag has accrued more than 5.3 billion views on the platform.
What I didn’t dig into for that story are the linguistic consequences of white influencers co-opting Black vernacular to sell the concept of being healthy online. Somewhere along its evolution into amorphous wellness jargon, that girl started to get capitalistic. Many posts under its hashtag coincide with promoting a certain lifestyle or wellness products. There are even instances of it showing up alongside in-video guidelines on how to be like the girl selling the product, making whatever it is more enticing.
This phenomenon is where the disconnect between the cultural meaning of the phrase and its current usage is most apparent. In the early 2000s, when I was introduced to the phrase, that girl wasn’t selling anything. She was just the baddest chick you knew. Now capitalism has seeped its way in, and part of being that girl means promoting her lifestyle. It also requires you, the content consumer, to believe that you could be the one sitting in a high-rise apartment looking out over the city as the sun rises— but only if you buy what that girl is selling.
Now, I’m not knocking the desire for nice apartments or healthy routines or even referring to yourself as that girl. You should see yourself as such! And, to an extent, aspirational content can be useful in helping people craft goals for themselves. The problem is promoting the belief that you must fit into a popular aesthetic.
Anyway, back to Beyoncé and how her latest music validates my thought process.
Renaissance opens with “I’m That Girl,” a dynamic track featuring a lightly screwed version of Princess Loko’s verse on Tommy Wright III’s “Still Pimpin’.” While hearing Please, motherfuckas ain’t stopping me on loop is almost too good—and I could go on about how great it is for hours—it’s the rest of the song’s lyrics that get at the point I’m making:
I pull up in these clothes, look so good 'Cause I'm in that ho You know all these songs sound good 'Cause I'm on that ho Deadass Deadass I'm deadass
It's not the diamonds It's not the pearls I'm that girl (I'm that girl) It's just that I'm that girl (I'm that girl) It's not my man (Ooh) It's not my stance (Ooh) I'm that girl (I'm that girl)
Being that girl was never about products, aesthetics, or anything materialistic. That girl is a mindset, a state of being. The track speaks directly to that girl’s true meaning by oozing confidence and evoking the temperament required to be the baddest on your block. To be that girl, you gotta drip swag and know your worth—two things you can’t buy. That girl doesn’t need greens powder or a Gymshark set. She doesn’t need to wake up at 5 AM or have a high-rise apartment in a major city. Sure, she might have and do those things, but that’s not where her essence is derived. And regardless, the dominance of women who fit that particular paradigm in this space proves how tightly socioeconomic privilege has become enmeshed with wellness.
I’m sure our Supreme wasn’t thinking about all this when she crafted the song. Still, intentionally or not, there’s profound power in rooting words in their true meaning—especially when the terms, which hold a particular definition in Black culture, are being co-opted by people with no real connection to them to sell an increasingly unattainable lifestyle.