The Curation of Carelessness: How The Effortless Look Actually Requires a Great Deal of Effort
Like the part you would play in a musical, the gender you may identify with, and the ‘customer-service voice’ you put on when trying to earn that extra tip at your minimum-wage job, fashion is essentially a performance. For many of us, our looks have a hidden agenda: we want to communicate something about ourselves without the use of dialogue. And although it may sound contradictory, the so-called “effortless look” is no exception.
We see it everywhere: the “no make-up” make-up looks, the shots of strategically tousled white sheets, the perfectly placed clay mask mirror selfies–this highly sought-after look is grounded in feigning the appearance of having put no effort into the achieved result. The purpose of curated carelessness is to give off a sense of relaxation and casualness, to embody an effortless and cool aesthetic, someone that simply doesn’t have to try to look this good.
But what people don't really talk about is how much harder it is to feel like you’ve achieved the effortless look when your natural self doesn’t necessarily fit perfectly into our culture’s beauty standards. In a world where money, thinness, and whiteness dominate the fashion world, it should come as no surprise that the “effortless look” often times stands on those same pillars of eurocentrism and class exhibition. My bushy brow, dark eye-bag, frizzy hair people know that it's not as easy as just waking up and walking out the door to look semi-alive.
So when you realize that pulling off the effortless look is walking a tightrope, and the line separating it from looking genuinely messy is a thin one–when can you admit that this desired aesthetic actually takes a lot of work? And once you come to that conclusion, doesn’t the goal of the effortless look suddenly become a moot point?
Catering to the effortless trend, there is a whole subgenre of fashion marketing carefully curating vintage pieces and overpriced basics to aid consumers in mastering the art of looking like they just rolled out of bed–without actually looking so. Aritzia’s $80 hoodies, $88 mens-style shirts, and $148 slacks fittingly called the Effortless Pant, prove they’re one of the reigning champs of upcharging basics that would go for 10 bucks at any old Goodwill. So not only does this type of calculated carelessness require hard work, it also requires having the resources to spend a rack on a glorified Hanes boys’ tank-top.
All that being said, my intent is not to hate on the person who does long to achieve this look. And I’m not saying there's anything wrong with minimalism or dropping a dime on basic pieces you’ll love for a long time. I do, however, feel it can be harmful for people to hold themselves up to standards that don't exist. People put a lot of work into looking like they didn't, and that's fine, except when you wake up in the morning and find that you don’t look like that person. You may more closely resemble an EECS major during dead week than that person. I know I do. But the truth is, I think most people do. And that's the secret. People spend a lot of money to look tossed together. They’ll spend 600 bucks on a Dyson Airwrap to look like the wind currents teamed up to give them not-too-perfectly face-framing curtain bangs. People simulate artfully disheveled looks that are simply not representative of any of our realities.
So if you got to this point in my long-winded rant, what I’d really like for you to take away from it is that it's okay if you’re not the person you see on your Instagram who looks so effortlessly beautiful, because chances are, they don’t either.
