What does it really mean to be a messy girl Being "messy" is more "clean" than you think

For the past few years, in the world of beauty and makeup, there seems to be one unspoken goal above all others: looking clean. Polished, glowing, composed, seemingly effortless. Its opposite, messy, on the other hand, sounds like an accusation: disorder, excess, something that needs fixing. But are we sure the issue is really aesthetic, or is it the moral value we’ve chosen to attach to these adjectives and ways of understanding appearance, makeup, and well-being that’s actually problematic?

What does it really mean to be a messy girl?

Clean vs messy

The clean girl is sold to us as the ultimate form of effortless beauty. Too bad there’s almost nothing effortless about it. The idea of being clean comes with a level of often disproportionate perfectionism: skin without texture, hair always in place, an image constantly under control. It’s an aesthetic that requires discipline, time, money, and a certain obsession with the idea of always being presentable. More than naturalness, it’s control. Control over the body, the image, the mistake. The underlying message is subtle but crystal clear: being clean is right, desirable, socially approved. Everything else is disorder. Something to fix. Messy, by contrast, is almost an act of surrender, but in the best possible sense. It’s accepting that not everything can be fixed, that something can stay out of place without losing its value. It’s chipped nail polish you don’t rush to redo, slightly disheveled hair, makeup that doesn’t aim to be flawless. And so the question arises: what if messy were simply a more honest way of existing? Not neglect, but acceptance. Not a lack of care, but stopping apologizing for not being perfect all the time.

The messy and chaotic it-girls

If messy is often translated as chaotic, then there are icons who have turned that chaos into a language and a personal identity. Courtney Love, queen of grunge and the kinderwhore aesthetic. The Olsen twins, who made dishevelment an extremely expensive aesthetic signature. Sky Ferreira, a staple in the playlists of Tumblr girls, with bleached hair and smudged lips. Ke$ha in her indie sleaze era, between glitter and smeared eyeliner. Lily Allen during the “Fuck You” and “Not Fair” years, messy and sarcastic, or Paz de la Huerta, always perfectly excessive, a true queen of messy hair. All women who never tried to look presentable, but real.

Messy makeup on TikTok

The messy make-up trend starts right here: from the desire to stop fixing everything. Yes, there’s a strong ’90s grunge vibe, but reducing it to that alone would be limiting. Messy makeup isn’t nostalgia for the past, it’s about creating deliberately smudged, undone, even simple looks to say that beauty doesn’t have to be glowy, symmetrical, or polished. In a world that wants us constantly put together, being messy almost becomes a form of freedom. And perhaps, paradoxically, the most natural one of all.