'Dirty Girl' Makeup Leaps From Runway to Real Life Amid Bleached Brow Craze

In today's trend landscape, fashion and beauty crazes seem to live out an entire life cycle in the time it takes to make a TikTok.

So it's no surprise that the "clean girl" beauty aesthetic, which rose to fame in summer 2022, thanks to the fresh-faced likes of Hailey Bieber, is already ebbing in favor of its bizarro double: "dirty girl" makeup.

Julia Fox, she of the bleached brows and Black Swan-esque eyeliner, coined the term in an appearance on Emily Ratajkowski's podcast High Low With EmRata on November 8.

"Clean girl aesthetic is out," the actress and fashion darling, 32, said. "It's about, like, dirty girl."

Fox then described her thought process when she gets ready for a public appearance. "If I were to get dressed now and have the thought, 'I hope guys, like, are into this'... I can't even picture that," she said. "Like, I really do not get dressed with men in mind at all. At all. At all."

Going back to an earlier point in the conversation when the two models discussed the economy of sex appeal, Ratajkowski agreed.

"You're like, 'This is how I can survive: by appealing to them [men],'" Ratajkowski said. "Now, you can f****** bleach your brows. I love that so much for you. So you're just doing stuff for yourself and for the girls."

Fox posted on TikTok further expanding the aesthetic's ethos on Sunday.

"Just so you guys know, aging is fully in," she said in the video. "Like, fully. Dirty girl. Ugly. Not wearing clothes that fit your body type. Just fully wearing everything you want."

Fox, whose spokesperson declined to comment for this story, has been spearheading an abstract approach to makeup since her fame rose stratospherically earlier in 2022.

While Fox has been a downtown New York City personality for some time and she starred in the Safdie Brothers' 2019 hit film Uncut Gems, a dalliance with Kanye West starting in January made her more visible than ever.

Fox is known for her bleached eyebrows and over-the-top eyeliner. Elsewhere in the fashion world, absurdist eyeshadow and cadaverous lipstick shades have also taken off. Even the likes of Gigi Hadid, who is normally known for a sun-drenched, Victoria's-Secret-friendly approach to beauty, tried a "dirty girl"-approved grey lip on November 7.

It's a sea change for the beauty world, but one that has been building for a while. In a sense, it's a backlash to a backlash. Late 2010s makeup enhanced what the New Yorker dubbed "Instagram face": full lips, arched brows, sultry eyes, perfect skin.

As this all started to feel a bit over-the-top, TikTokers invented and adopted the "clean girl" aesthetic. That's a practice that appears to require fewer steps (and fewer injectables) but doesn't, always, in practice.

Its most famous adherent was Bieber, who went viral for apparently not even needing to use concealer in a video hawking that exact product.

"Clean girl" has frustrated many who try the aesthetic but don't see the same results as Bieber. They might want to try "dirty girl": a look that asks adherents not to pursue no-makeup perfection but to use their face as a blank canvas for the most outré looks they can imagine.

The British makeup artist Dame Pat McGrath collaborated with Fox on an exaggerated black eyeliner look earlier in 2022 that spawned everything from memes to Halloween costumes.

"My intention was to create a boldly graphic neo-noir eye as subversive as it was stunning," McGrath told Newsweek.

"It was like social media instantly became obsessed with my look for Julia. It was truly amazing to watch how quickly this trend took off in real time. It's been fabulous to see so many people adopt the look of bleached brows on their own or with bold, graphic eyes as their own signature style statement."

McGrath has been spearheading the look for decades: she's been crafting abstract makeup looks for fashion designers since a Comme des Garçons show in 1997; Christian Dior by John Galliano in 1999; Yohji Yamamoto in the 2000s and Schiaparelli Haute Couture just a few months ago. So why has it only taken off in the mainstream now?

"I think the transition from catwalk to sidewalk can be traced to a desire for fearlessness, self-empowerment and exploring new approaches to beauty," McGrath tells Newsweek.

"I believe that we are entering a new era where people are ready for something beyond looking 'perfect;' the popularity of bleached brows and bold, smoky eyes are the natural evolution of style."

And as McGrath has been perfecting this look for decades, she points out that even the model depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa might have been an early fan, whether because she was naturally brow-less or got her hands on some bleach.

"If I gave Mona a little smoky eye with my Legendary Wear Velvet Kohl Eyeliner, she'd be absolutely of the moment in today's look," McGrath says.

Zanna Roberts Rassi, television personality and co-founder of Milk Makeup, served this trend to Gen-Z on a neon platter in her company's first campaign in 2016.

Milk Makeup presented "the antithesis of the hyper-glam faces which we were being bombarded with in beauty campaigns, social media, and editorials," Roberts Rassi told Newsweek. "It was, perhaps, shocking to some."

Roberts Rassi and her co-founders sensed that the heavily contoured look favored by many a Kardashian would fade soon. "We knew that a pathologically preened beauty look wasn't for everyone – that not one size beauty fits all either," she said.

Six years later, it's clear Milk Makeup was onto something. Not only were bare brows and facial piercings all over the most recent Balenciaga runway, but TikTok is dominated by teens and twenty-somethings testing the out-there looks across America.

"I think it's fair to say in uncertain times we want to look – and so feel, strong," Roberts Rassi told Newsweek. "Removing brows and stamping on a lip is like saying, 'Don't mess with me today.'"

Roberts Rassi calls the look "club kid," referencing a scene with roots in the 1990s. She says that abstract makeup doesn't equate the end of pretty. "Bleached brows don't adhere to conventional standards, but showing up with no brows is strong," she said. "And strong to me is pretty."

It's tempting to attribute this male-gaze-deflecting trend to the current socio-political climate. As abortion rights are being rolled back in some parts of the U.S. and grappling over the fate of #MeToo movement continues, deflecting the male gaze isn't just a statement of independence: it can be a defense mechanism.

"Beauty is a good barometer of the time we are in and right now. It's idiosyncratic makeup for an idiosyncratic time," Roberts Rassi told Newsweek. "Perhaps, in some cases, women are purposely looking for a look to repel the male gaze. But, in others, it's about rocking a new trend or wearing a look that's going to power you through that day."

It's hard to deny the liberation that comes with bleaching one's brows and rocking eyeliner that could've been scribbled on with a Sharpie. As Fox said in her recent TikTok about the "dirty girl" trend, "Being pretty and hot in your 20s is the f****** trenches, okay? And I'm not going back there."