Get Ready With Me: How Social Media Is Changing the Way Teens Shop, Style & Express Themselves

At first, I never really understood the appeal of “Get Ready With Me” videos. Why would I want to watch someone I’d never met pick out an outfit, do their hair, and change their mind about the same pair of shoes three times?

Then, somehow, I started watching them too.

And I realized the getting-ready part wasn’t always what kept me watching. A GRWM can begin with someone standing in front of their closet and end with them talking about school, friendships, an embarrassing story, or whatever happens to be on their mind. Fashion gives the conversation somewhere to start, but rarely is it where it ends.

For Gen Z, that feels fitting. We’ve grown up with our identities existing both online and offline, and fashion has become one of the places where those worlds meet. Social media exposes us to styles and people we may have never encountered otherwise, giving us room to experiment with how we present ourselves.

Simultaneously, there’s something a little ironic about being encouraged to “express yourself” on an app driven by an algorithm.

We’re supposed to be individual, yet somehow the same shoes, aesthetics, and microtrends end up on all of our feeds. This leads me to raise a question I think my generation is still figuring out: Are we discovering our personal style, or is our personal style being recommended to us? Honestly, probably a little bit of both.

But maybe GRWMs aren’t as revolutionary as they appear. Before TikTok and Instagram, friends got ready together, siblings borrowed each other’s clothes, and teenagers asked, “Does this look good?” The screen changed. The instinct didn’t.

Every generation has used fashion to figure out how they want to be seen. Gen Z simply turned on the camera and invited the world to watch us figure it out.