Years ago, when I was first attempting to make a living in journalism, I did the occasional stint of consultancy (risible as it now seems that a 24-year-old could ‘consult’ on anything). PR companies would pay me to come in and tell them how to get more coverage, better coverage or just coverage which centred their niche and unappealing clients. And one of the things they always seemed to want was to author a social trend.
The most famous social trend, the one they all cited time and again, was the #NoMakeUpSelfie, a mega viral whirlwind which got women all over the world posting pictures of their – shock horror – makeup free faces. It spurned think pieces, it inspired talk show segments, it probably raised some money for breast cancer research, the paper-thin reasoning behind the whole pseudo-feminist rouse, and it disappeared as quickly as it started, lost to the annals of cringey Facebook memories. But time and again, PR companies would ask me: what makes these trends work?
It’s a question I found myself asking this week, as my social media has been filled with endless carousels of pictures labeled ‘Kinda chic.’ If you’re sufficiently offline to have missed this trend, firstly my congratulations. Secondly, by way of explanation, plus size content creator Maria Begins posted a picture with text overlaid, reading ‘Kinda chic to keep posting myself online despite the hate comments I get.’
And from there the contagion started. Women (and it is mostly women) all over the world posting pictures of themselves, partially covered by expositional text explaining what they regard as their most interesting or valuable characteristics. ‘Kinda chic to be divorced by 30, Kinda chic to have one child, kinda chic to renovate a house, kinda chic to have a badly trained dalmatian, kinda chic to be child free, kinda chic to get fired’ – the specifics vary, but they’re all unified by their inherent quality which is the 2026 gloss over the good old fashioned humblebrag.
The answer I gave those PR companies a decade ago is the same one I come to now. These trends work because they’re a Trojan Horse for bragging. The ‘no-make-up selfie’ allowed you to demonstrate how clear your skin was without foundation. Kinda chic allows you to point out your best and most brilliant pieces of personal lore in ways that you’d never dream of doing in real life.
Kinda chic allows you to point out your best and most brilliant pieces of personal lore in ways that you’d never dream of doing in real life
Much as I’d like to, it would be difficult to justify simply posting: ‘I have television shows in development with various major broadcasters’ or ‘I’ve never given either of my daughters an iPad’ or ‘My second husband is six foot and extremely handsome’ because I know I’m not supposed to say that. I want to. The entire point of my Instagram account is to make people I haven’t seen since university think that I’m impressive. But I can’t because I’m bound with the inherent desire to be regarded as modest – a condition that afflicts most women. These trends are a secret passage around that modesty. It’s not bragging! It’s just joining in with a trend!
It’s the exact same mentality that sees social media users framing their triumphs as failures (‘The children complained for the whole first hour of our hike, I don’t know why we bother going to the Cornwall house!’ or ‘It’s going to be a four hour round trip to drop Coco for her first day at Oxford, what a nightmare!’ )
While I’m unwilling to do it myself, I’d have a lot more time and respect for anyone who decided to just be honest about it. Shout from the rafters that you weigh less than you did before you had children, your bonus had six figures, and you have sex with your husband three times a week. It’s not going to make anyone dislike you much more than these twee posts do, and at least it would be honest. Or, realistically, it would probably inspire yet another social media trend. #JustBragAboutIt.
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