Party Girl: Taking Revenge on the ‘Clean Girl’ Aesthetic

Everybody’s met her at least once, and many have been her at some point. She’s the girl who walks into a trash-ridden flat two hours after the party has started and immediately becomes the beating heart of the rave. She’s utterly captivating, a manic pixie dream girl made up of cigarettes, cocaine, and cunt. She’s every straight man’s fantasy, until he really gets to know her. Girls can’t decide if they want to befriend her, be with her, or be her.  

She’s also, more often than not, falling apart at the seams.  

The ‘party girl’ aesthetic is a trend we’ve seen come in and out of social circulation for decades. Back in the late 2000s/early 2010s, you’d find Ke$ha pulling the finger at paparazzi, the Olsen Twins with side bangs and ciggies, Lindsay Lohan shoplifting, Effy Stonem from Skins snorting a line, and Sky Ferreira caught carrying ecstasy.  

The current resurgence of the indie sleaze party girl comes fresh off the release of Charli XCX’s new hyper-pop album Brat. Today, we’ve got Julia Fox, Gabbriette, and Ke$ha will just always be that girl.  

But the vengeance of the party girl also comes at the tail end of the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic, which resulted in young girls hunting down every skincare brand their favourite influencer endorsed. Some might even say that the party girl has arrived in rebellion against the clean girl and the regiment she demands.  

Where the clean girl look consisted of slicked-back buns, dewy skin makeup, and clothes that fit tightly against the body, the party girl is a hot mess. Strong emphasis on the ‘hot’. A vision in ripped fishnets and smudged makeup, the party girl doesn’t care about maintaining appearances of ‘cleanliness’, because the party girl is too busy keeping her own, sometimes destructive, appearances. Where the party girl can hide her mess in blurry digicams, the clean girl zooms in on her pores with the new iPhone 15 camera upgrade.  

Most trends to take the internet by storm have come with their own sets of issues and problematic habits to follow. But whenever you throw drugs and alcohol into the core characteristics of the current niche trend, you're bound to come across dangerous behaviours. And in a country that already struggles with younger generations getting into excessive drug use and binge drinking, heavily glamorising such a lifestyle can quickly shift from a risky game to something much more sinister.  

Self-soothing through the usage of drugs and alcohol is nothing new, especially with substances such as marijuana having dominated the self-medication scene for the longest time. Researchers at the University Otago have proven ketamine works as a short-term medicine to treat depression. And just a few months ago, the Otago researchers started recruiting willing patients for a trial regarding the usage of ketamine against therapy-resistant depression.  

The indie sleaze party girls love a bit of ketamine, and if this research has made me realise anything, it's that this aesthetic is actually just depression in a different form.  

Attempting to receive proper therapy often results in months-long waiting lists and advice that doesn’t always stick. The path to prescription medication can be equally draining, often leading to a revolving door of Prozac, Zoloft, Loxamine, Celexa, Ritalin, and many others.  

But for those who the clean girl lifestyle is too unachievable -- a bag or coke seems like the perfect accessory.  

The mess that depression leaves behind can sometimes be too much for a would-be clean girl to consider tackling. As a result, many younger people find comfort in embracing the mess of the sleaze, allowing themselves slump days and slip-ups. From that point, the doorway that peaks into the party girl's flashing lights and drug and alcohol abuse becomes easier to open. 

In comparison to the regimented strictness of cleanliness or the hoops you have to jump through for therapy, recreational drugs are almost always easier to access and are effective immediately.  

But the more I look into this idolised clean girl, the more I find that she is just as mentally ill as the party girl.  

The clean girl drinks a green smoothie every morning and has no space for messy clothes in her beige, minimalist bedroom. She didn’t need drugs because she so clearly already had her life together, and anybody who hadn’t caught up to her was falling behind. 

Where the party girl becomes too wild, the clean girl becomes too controlling of herself. She hyper fixates on perfection. She judges herself too hard on how many bumps her ponytail has, the pimple on her chin, and most dangerously... what she eats.  

The world has put both the clean girl and party girl on a pedestal. But really these aesthetics glamorise addiction, eating disorders, and mental health issues.  

Both have become too extreme. In reality, women don’t need to fit into a trend or aesthetic.  

There is a hard line on the freedom to be wild or be strict. Where it is for everyone is different, but if you plan on finding it, be hot without the harm. Get your drugs tested, use them in moderation, and don’t snort whatever you find stuck on the floor of the club.