A 2023 study led by the Pew Research Center found that 73% of teenage girls use TikTok regularly, 13% more than their male peers. In such a judgmental society, the online world may seem like a shelter from the real one, but social media has been proven to only worsen young girls’ insecurities.
Interviews conducted with 14-17 year old girls in Australia concluded that not only did most of the girls have struggles with their weight and body image, their anxieties are exacerbated by social media use, which provides a perfect platform to compare their appearances to others.
This is how stores like Brandy spread like wildfire across the teenage community. Brandy Melville’s popularity among teenagers skyrocketed around the time when social media was introduced.
With a new ‘it girl’ to compare yourself to every day, the feelings of inferiority never end. You constantly want the newest clothes, the prettiest face, the best body. And Brandy has been curated perfectly to profit off of the constant need to be trendy. To be beautiful. To be perfect.
The 2024 HBO documentary-style exposé entitled Brandy Hellville and the Cult of Fast Fashion, a teenage female interviewee said: “Fashion is identity, especially for teenage girls. This is how you show who you are, who you’re friends with, and I think Brandy Melville encapsulates that.”
Brandy feeds into the ever-changing beauty standards, thus feeding into the crushing pressure that young girls feel to be good enough. Pretty enough. Thin enough.
Not too short, but not too tall. Not out of style but not too basic. Curly hair is ugly but pin straight hair needs more volume. Everyone wants a tan, but not too dark. Everyone wants freckles, but only in the right places. Everyone is desperate to overcome the new insecurity that strangers on the internet create every week for the sole purpose of breaking each other down.
Legging legs. Strawberry ankles. Headphone waist. Vuvuzela arms. All real terms popularized on TikTok in the last few months.
When there’s pressure coming from every aspect of your life: your peers, your phone, movies, TV, in some cases, even your own family… How could you not give in?
Brandy Melville promises these girls to give them what they crave. Fashionable. Trendy. Pretty. It’s hard not to fall down the endless hole of pretty clothes and colors. Everything you want. Everything you need.
But Brandy makes these promises with their fingers crossed behind their back, with every intention of keeping these girls on a never ending race with “pretty”, chasing it, catching it, and watching it slip through their fingers like sand in a strainer.
That’s exactly what they want.
