Is Chic In The Eye Of The Beholder? TikTok Stands Divided On Cool Girl Territory

To chic or not to chic? That’s the question TikTok is debating, or more accurately, are you really chic, a label women are indoctrinated into coveting the moment our retinas can digest images. Creator Tara Colleen made waves on the Clock App when she innocently (or perhaps, not so innocently) posted a video that begins “things I find incredibly unchic… part 1. And I say part one because it’s a very long list.” Tara’s path to redline what is chic by snarkily unpacking what isn’t, at least by her standards, got wheels turning in the chic and unchic communities alike, starting with her comment section. So what does it mean to be chic in today’s aesthetic-obsessed world, and why is the pursuit of it more elusive than ever?

The Chic Debate On TikTok

Thanks to a viral video, TikTokers are in the trenches over how to be chic. It started with Tara’s video, voicing a bunch of “unchic” things she prefaces as “her opinion” but also “proven fact” while she swirls a glass of ginger ale in a wine glass.

Tara’s tacky (the opposite of chic) no-no’s include tattoos (“when you get old they’re not gonna look cute, I’m so sorry”), visible logos (“money talks, wealth whispers”), anything Lululemon, Louis Vuitton Never Full bags, Golden Goose shoes, and even worse Golden Goose dupes. These items, which she deems “the stay at home mom starter kit,” along with a few more inconsequential mentions, like baggy denim with stretch or tops with print only on the front, are also included because they’re “cheap” and “cheap does not equate to chic.”

But creator @shansclosefriends, an admittedly unchic soul, was confused by Tara’s message, starting with the fact that Tara critiqued “VPL” (visible panty line) when her own bra strap was hanging out during her diatribe. “As an unchicer” with tattoos, Shan deemed Tara’s video “unchic on unchic crime.” Shan laughed, “Girl, the call is coming from inside the house.”

“Things I find inherently chic” videos have been trending on TikTok, eliciting many women, not just Tara, to take a stab at going viral by rattling off the opposite. Tara’s comment section had little interest in her ingenuity, however. Quick to pounce on internet hubris, they used her as their line in the sand in the chic vs. unchic war on TikTok.

“Dead animals in a house is unchic,” one commenter wrote, referring to a taxidermied deer head hanging on Tara’s wall. “Being unkind and judgy is also very unchic. Hope this helps!” another added.

So, is there a prescriptive code to being chic, and does it hinge on the size of your disposable income, as Tara’s response video to the backlash suggests? Many people upset with Tara’s take believe chicness is something impossible to define, like class: the moment you bring it up, you’ve already missed the point. “Writing a whole list on what’s unchic is so corny,” one user quipped.

What does it mean to be chic?

Image Credit: Getty Images

Chic feels like a permanent fixture in our lexicon, but the word didn’t exist until the 1600s. It evolved from the French word chicanery, meaning “legal quibbling” and “sophistry.” It’s only fitting that the word derived from decidedly chic culture since, presumably, the beginning of time. Even more ironically, French writer Charles Bauledere, one of the first to discuss the word in print, called the slang “a horrendous and strange word, recently coined.”

Just a few centuries later, chic became the calling card for it girls from Europe, like Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, though I’d only have chic DNA printed on my cells when I finally laid eyes on supermodel Naomi Campbell in the 90s. To be chic quickly came to be inextricably linked with fashion. If you’re someone Anna Wintour would visually co-sign, then, voila, you’re chic.

Image Credit: Getty Images

But in the 90s, chic wasn’t monolithic. Naomi, Linda, and Kate all embodied the core tenets: stylish, elegant, and fashionable, though they were all wildly different from the fair-skinned, small-nosed French actresses who didn’t have black eyeliner smudged on their faces and each other. Niles Rogers said it best, “Le freak, c’est chic.”

In our post-social-media society, conforming compliantly to a visual tribe is always on trend. If you’re not a clean girl, you’re a pilates princess. If you’re not a Pilates princess, you’re a mob wife. Like these labels, chicness has long outgrown the textiles in your closet. It’s an entire lifestyle that girls online are dying to get their hands on.

How can you be chic?

According to the SparkNotes from Tara’s TikTok, chic is a matter of money, modesty, and etiquette. And some people agree with her conservative take. Conservative, stylistically speaking, given Tara pointedly avoided disclosing if she voted for Trump in the face of many comments accusing her of such — an act they deemed incredibly unchic. Recently, politically right-wing women have attempted to become allies with the chic aesthetic, likely in response to the popularity of “Republican makeup.”

While I find most of Tara’s specific distastes too basic to be groundbreaking, she did say something very interesting in her follow-up video. “The problem isn’t whether or not I could afford [a Never Full bag]. It’s just the fact that I don’t find it to be chic. And the reason I don’t find it to be chic is because it’s so easily obtainable, and it’s knocked off so much that it’s not special anymore.” In this way, I agree with her. Chic doesn’t come with a price tag or as a guarantee with shopping from a certain brand.

Chic is an essence you can’t buy, like how style and taste are earned as opposed to being stylish and trendy. As one very animated TikToker corrected in a video aimed at Tara — and a slew of other “mediocre white women” who she believes have mistaken themselves to be “arbiters of style” — “anyone and anything can be chic, it’s about an attitude.”

Now, I do believe anything might be a stretch. A red MAGA hat, for example, will never in a million years be chic, but a less hyperbolic example would be armpit stains. That doesn’t mean armpit stains, dark roots, or hitting yourself in the teeth with a glass are crimes punishable by the sudden death of ego. Being chic is the act of making human existence feel and look a little less raw, even though it inherently is. Luann de Lesseps got it all too right when she crooned, “chic c’est la via, c’est bon, c’est bon.” Chic is elegantly joyful escapism from the world’s fuckery in visual form. However you choose to materialize that glamorous fuck-you works just fine.