The Making of an IT girl. What does it truly take to be an… | by @itsamundanemonday | May, 2023

What does it truly take to be an internet icon?

“You’re my Alix Earle ❤️ ”

For those who require a translation, this statement is a way for TikTok commenters to express their affection for someone who is their own personal IT girl. To specify, Alix Earle is a seemingly overnight social media sensation who has successfully amassed millions of followers on both TikTok and Instagram. Alix achieved this by filming videos of her getting ready for ‘influencer gatherings’ and UMiami College events and is only getting more popular by the day.

Internet fame is a fascinating subject. Someone could have thousands of people who care about their lives and follow their every move and still be relatively unknown to most of the world.

So while the Powerpuff girls are made of sugar, spice and everything nice, the components of an ‘IT girl’ are more obscure. I aim to detail what contributes to the achievement of the IT girl status.

All successful celebrities and social media personalities know the importance of personal branding. A large part of having a good personal brand is controlling or creating the narrative around your personal life and career success.

For example, Sofia Richie, beloved daughter of Lionel Richie, has recently gotten married to Elliot Grainge. Whilst people get married every single day, what has launched her into recent IT girl status is the visible rebrand that has come from being with Elliot.

Before this, Sofia was an 18 year old girlfriend to Scott Disick’s and a surrogate mother to his children. Now that she is with Elliot, her public persona and style is noticeably different. Whilst her dating situation had previously been castigated as chaotic and messy, she is now characterized as classy and elegant.

“You can just see how she is glowing”

“We all have our Scott before we have our Elliot”

Girls don’t just want to *be* Sofia. They are Sofia. Many women have experienced what it’s like to truly glow on the inside because they are loved by the right person. Or, if they haven’t, they aspire to that experience.

In a similar vein, Lori Harvey (beloved daughter of Steve Harvey — there does seem to be a common theme) has a strong personal brand as well. She is very commonly known for dating desirable black Hollywood stars.

A snippet from an interview of hers often circulates around “remember that you are the prize… always”.

Lori Harvey is who we’d all be if we just affirmed ourselves and acted out of our own personal worth.

At face value, nepotism babies who date rich influential men are entirely unrelatable to the common girl. However, with the right storytelling — their public stories become our own.

IT girls must possess two things — something we have, and something we could never have.

To bring it back to Alix Earle, there are many people who can relate to the college experience. Whether it is living messily with a bunch of roommates, going to uni balls or struggling through their final exams. In that respect, Alix is the ‘everygirl’.

However, the ability to go on brand trips in Dubai and get thousands of dollars of public release makeup items is aspirational. Her lifestyle is lavish and exciting in ways we can only observe through a phone screen.

Likewise, with Sofia, her wedding has been likened to that of Royals, decked out in custom Chanel celebrated in the South of France. It’s a fairytale wedding we can only dream of.

Their lives are public, yet mysterious. There has to be a sort of magic in observing the way they live.

Like the young Hollywood ingenue, there must be an enchanting beauty to the IT girl. That beauty must almost be entirely unattainable. It has to be other worldly in a way that the average person cannot dare but dream of.

Alix Earle has the early 2000s blonde and slim aesthetic that so many people dream of.

Lori Harvey has the perfect Pilates body and the diet to match.

“She doesn’t have a flaw and we all wanna be her.”

For us to love the IT girl, something must connect us to her. Something must make us believe that if we did enough ‘hot girl walks’, or committed to getting our hair done frequently enough and ate the right salad mix we’d look exactly like them.

So much so, the lifestyles they possess can so easily be sold to a general audience. If your lip gloss can do that much for the IT girl, how much more could it do for me? If that vitamin C serum could make her skin glow like that, how much more would mine?

Unfortunately, no amount of hours spent at the gym can achieve with money, genetics and a plastic surgeon can.

But when an IT girl jumps, we ask how high.

The downfall of the IT girl is so well-documented. Fame of any kind is often temporal. Managing being extraordinary and relatable at the same time is a near impossible task.

An example of this is Hailey Bieber. At first, her lip combos and white chrome nail polish was all the rage. Every time she did anything, there was a legion of women flocking to do the same.

Hailey and her PR team controlled the narrative. She was beautiful and aspirational. She was very particular about being an icon in her own right, detached from her popstar husband Justin Beiber.

That was until she had a very public internet feud with Selena Gomez.

I do not wish to cast aspersions on her character or even detail the backwards and forwards Tiktoks and IG stories which make up that drama. But demonstrably, after the internet drama had run its course, the pull that Hailey had on the general public was not as strong.

IT girls can’t be mean girls.

There is nothing worse than imagining a pretty girl being nasty to her peers. If not them, then us. We do not relate to a mean girl, and we cannot aspire to be one. Once the public makes those two conclusions, the downfall of the IT girl comes swiftly after.

It is clear that popularity and influence cannot be so easily quantified. Regardless, there are a number of observable qualities and indicators which IT girls can commonly be characterized by. Too often we can swept up in perfect PR storms.

In any case, all that you and I can do is be committed to being extraordinary characters within our ordinary lives.