(No. 2) Brunette Bieber and the new cool girl
Reflections on 'natural' beauty and my recent trip to the hair salon
A few weeks ago, I began perusing Instagram and Pinterest for hair inspo. I hadn’t been to a hair salon in three (THREE!) years, and I finally made a color and cut appointment at a swanky London salon. My blonde highlights had grown out completely, and the only people who had taken scissors to my hair since the pandemic were my mom and my boyfriend (okay, also me—I have a bad habit of examining my split ends when I’m stressed—whatever). Needless to say, after months of tying my hair back in a bun to hide my uneven layers, I was ready for a refresh. I imagined myself freshly blonded and bobbed, looking more like my Californian self and a little less like my Vitamin-D deficient, has-lived-in-England-for-a-decade, and hasn’t-been-outdoors-since-the-pandemic, Rachel.
Now, one thing I’ve learned over the years is to bring a photo reference to the hairdresser, because words often get lost in translation. But as I explored social media for blonde inspo, I noticed a trend: blonde, it seemed, was no longer in. ‘Brunette Bieber,’ however, was everywhere. ‘Brunette Bieber,’ for the uninitiated, is a reference to model Hailey Bieber, who recently ditched her blonde locks for deeper tones and made headlines in all of the major women’s magazines. (See: Vogue, Grazia, Glamour, Allure, & Cosmopolitan if you don’t believe me).
It wasn’t long before I noticed the trickle down from the celebrity to the influencer sphere. Allison Bornstein, a stylist I follow on social media for her unpretentious but tailored style of dress, unveiled new caramel hair on Instagram, a deviation from her typical blonde. When people asked how she achieved the new color, she told followers that she shared a Brunette Bieber Pinterest board with her hair stylist.
The funny thing about seeing reference images enough times is that they start to grow on you. Or, at least, I’m susceptible to their influence. Despite only having ever lightened my hair, the darker hues began appealing to me: they were closer to my actual hair color, which would make the overall look easier to achieve and possibly be less maintenance (read: cheaper). But there was also an unspoken allure that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. The almost-blonde-and-too-warm-to-really-be-brown hair held a mystery and intrigue that neither color has on its own—or, at least that’s how it seemed to me at the time.
In almost every article about this new hair trend (also, try not to judge me for reading articles about hair color, thanks), I noticed a theme: this new brunette was hailed as a return to the ‘natural,’ a parting of ways from the more artificial blonde. Camille Charriere, the ultimate French-British cool girl on Instagram, wrote a piece for Vogue UK in March this year about her return to her ‘dark roots’ after years of dyeing her hair blonde. This reacquaintance with her brunette roots was a journey more than skin (or hair) deep, she proclaimed—it was a homecoming to herself. In other words, shedding the blonde was an act of authenticity, self-love, and growth.
The appeal of ‘natural’ beauty is not new, but rarely is it ever natural. I think of the no-makeup makeup tutorials on YouTube and the more recent ‘clean-girl’ makeup on TikTok—beauty looks that supposedly enhance your features and give the appearance that you could have just woken up like this. Of course, these looks are not natural, low key, or low maintenance; they require skill, effort, time and a heap of products (maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline). Bieber’s stylist charges from $350 for highlights/balayage, which doesn’t even include the cost of the haircut (another $200). These hairdos don’t come cheap—even the decent, non-celebrity salons in the UK charge similar prices.
Before I go on, I need to interject with a disclaimer. I’m not saying that any of these trends are shameful per se, and I implicate myself in them fully. I’ve watched no-makeup makeup tutorials, and I don’t think anyone should be judged for putting effort into their appearance. I merely want to point out the mismatch between the ‘effortless’ aesthetic and the effort they actually require to achieve. What I think they do reveal is the allure of ‘natural’ and the lengths that people (myself, included) will go in order to look naturally beautiful.
But what does natural even mean? Natural for whom? And who gets to claim natural beauty?
There’s no coincidence that the women who have been transitioning to these darker hues are white (and wealthy, thin, able-bodied). This so-called ‘natural’ hair is not coiled, not coarse and straight, not kinky, not an afro. And we also know that ‘natural’ is not celebrated but penalized when it comes to racialized populations. This is especially true for Black Americans; a Black student was banned from his high school graduation in 2020 unless he agreed to cut his dreadlocks, and Black women have repeatedly been told they don’t look ‘professional’ when wearing styles that work with their natural hair texture. Recently on TikTok, creators have been asking their followers to say whether they look ‘clean’ or ‘musty.’ Creator @kruthimattupalli posted a video that now has over 300k views and which reads, ‘I will not be participating in the clean/musty trend bc I know for a fact that people are going to think that I’m musty just bc I’m Indian.’ The type of ‘natural’ being praised as beautiful (or ‘clean’), then, is not so much about the extent to which someone’s features are (un)touched, but about their proximity to whiteness.
Now, if you’re someone who wants to play devil’s advocate, you might say: But wait. Surely, the blonde aesthetic is the ultimate expression of white supremacy when it comes to beauty standards. So, isn’t a move away from blonde and towards brunette a less toxic trend? Is this not an important cultural shift in what it means to be beautiful?
Well, there are two points I’ll finish with. The first is, blonde isn’t going anywhere. Despite the allure and reach of this Brunette Bieber trend, blonde-as-beauty still reigns supreme and white beauty as we know it is still thriving. Model Gigi Hadid ended the latest fashion month by debuting platinum blonde hair; Emma Chamberlain and Kim Kardashian bleached their locks for the Met Gala; and golden blonde Blake Lively’s dress wasn’t the only gilded part of her Met Gala look. Point being: the association between beauty and blonde is alive and well.
And second, the Brunette Bieber trend is not a challenge to white beauty standards, but a new manifestation of them and interwoven structures of power, like class and ability. I think of it as ‘cool girl’ brunette (or even ‘cool girl’ blonde to be honest—these brunettes aren’t that dark, are they?). Glamour described this new ‘it’ color as ‘Riviera brunette’: warmed up brunette tresses that look like they’ve been naturally kissed by the sun while tanning in Southern France, Aperol spritz in hand. It’s the kind of color that says, ‘I’m so wealthy, I can achieve this look without visiting a salon because I spend enough time lounging in resorts.’ It’s the kind of color that says, ‘Even in a society that worships blondes, I’m so hot (read: white and thin), I don’t even need to be blonde for you to think I’m sexy.’ It’s the kind of color that says, ‘This look is out of reach for you, but it’s natural for me.’ It’s the kind of color that ultimately says, ‘I’m white, I’m wealthy, I’m thin, I’m beautiful—and I don’t even have to try to be these things.’ What makes these girls ‘cool’ is not the shade of their hair, but how closely their physical features inherently (naturally) embody whiteness, and therefore also in how unattainable the look is for everyone else. It’s a white girl look you can’t buy (although I’m sure the beauty industrial complex will try to convince you otherwise). I’m reminded of the infamous Cool Girl quote from the novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (excerpt below, but the full quote is worth reading):
Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
What alarms me most about this discussion is that my own aesthetic judgments do not stand outside of these influences but within them. I am just as susceptible to these images and the messages they signify as the people I’ve so far mentioned in this essay; I am not immune to the allure of the ‘cool girl’ or Brunette Bieber. I need to ask myself what it means to exist within these power structures in this body of mine and how my own aesthetic ‘choices’ (re)produce the types of -isms I want to dismantle: racism, sexisim, sizeism, abelism, classism. It was only after my visit to the hairdresser that I had these reflections. When I went to the salon, I said I want to look warm, like I hadn’t been living under a rock for the past two years and had seen the sun, but also not like I had taken a bottle of bleach to my hair. You know, I want something that feels lived in. Something natural.
Fin.
Thank you for reading! Comments are on.
x Rachel
P.S. Also, I want to put it out there that I’m open to writing for other publications and platforms. If you think I might be a fit for a publication you’re affiliated with, or if you want to publish my writing, please get in touch. :)
Really insightful commentary. I once thought about dyeing my blonde hair brown because I was tired of the "dumb blonde" jokes. When I was younger, people often thought I was stupid when they first met me -- until I started speaking and they realized I was (am!) actually intelligent.