Social media users, beauty lovers are 'uniquely upset' about the 'blueberry milk' nail trend: 'I refuse'
Trend cycles are moving faster than ever, and there’s a point of no return when it comes to promoting the next “new” thing — which might explain the side eye being directed at the current “blueberry milk” nail trend.
A lot of the responses duet Who What Wear‘s TikTok video on the trend, posted on June 24. The TikTok dubbed blueberry milk nails “the cutest summer nail trend” and claims Dua Lipa and Sofia Richie “love” the color.
Right now, the overarching theme for a lot of beauty-related trends is food. “Tomato girl summer,” “cherry cola hair” and “McDonald’s bangs” are some that have cropped up in the past few months, sometimes naming a look or style that already existed. Of these three examples, “tomato girl summer” refers to a style of dress inspired by the Mediterranean, with flashes of bright red and neutral colors; “cherry cola” referring to dyeing your hair a dark red; and “McDonald’s bangs,” a haircut, each of the three repackaged as a shiny new concept that brands can leverage to sell things.
But in the case of “blueberry milk” nails, it doesn’t appear to work, according to TikTok users’ reactions.
“Blueberry milk nails are a manufactured trend that people on TikTok have started recognizing — it’s just kind of a marketing scheme to name something that’s been around for a long time,” a TikTok user named Caitlyn surmised in a video that has since racked up almost 3 million views. “But I’ve noticed that people are getting uniquely upset about blueberry milk nails.”
The hashtag for blueberry milk nails has over 11 million views on TikTok and is divided between users trying to ride the trend wave and users who, as Caitlyn said, seem angry about it.
“You know what we’re not doing?” beauty influencer Katie Raymond asked in a recent video. “We’re not turning ‘light blue’ into ‘blueberry milk.’ I refuse.”
“In what world is ‘blueberry milk nails’ or ‘pastel blue’ ‘unexpected’ for summer?” another beauty-focused content creator, Aidan, asked. “That’s like saying wearing gold is unexpected for Christmas.”
“In case you missed it, those are baby blue nails, which have been a thing since the ’90s — which is probably the last decade we saw any semblance of creativity and individuality,” TikToker Sasha Whitney shared. “Earlier this year, everybody wanted to be Alix Earle, three months ago, everybody wanted to be Sofia Richie, and it looks like this beige aesthetic is not going anywhere.”
Who What Wear isn’t the only beauty publication doing this. Beauty and wellness outlet Byrdie has a whole section dedicated to nail care that gives manicures names like “latte nails,” “Aperol Spritz nails,” “juiciest Jello” and “milky nails.”
“Milky nails” has almost 52 million views on TikTok, and a Glamour article from April wrote that while “milk nails aren’t exactly new,” they stem from the “clean girl makeup aesthetic” — a “core” that dominated social media from the end of 2022 to early 2023.
The same Glamour article described milky nails as “subtler” than the “glazed donut nails” that were associated with Hailey Bieber in mid-2022.
But why are people so mad about blueberry milk nails and not about other repackaged trends?
“A large portion of our sense of self and our personal identity is constructed by the things that we consume and the way that we relate to them,” Caitlyn explained in her video. “‘Blueberry milk nails’ are being predetermined by marketing teams, and yet these products and our relationship to them is becoming a kind of proxy for a sense of personality.”
Caitlyn also discussed a study made popular by the social cognitive psychologist Albert Bandura, which found that people enjoy following trends because it “shortens and eases the thought process” of figuring out what to buy, what to wear and how to be.
Caitlyn argued that because people recognize that renaming “light blue” as “blueberry milk” is (as she wrote in her TikTok caption) “a dumb marketing trick” that’s too obvious, it’s hard to succumb to the trend.
What a lot of these trends have in common is they’re typically recycled from a previous trend. When used correctly, they’re a great way for brands to sell products.
“Corecore” was a commentary and a subversion of the nonstop “-core” trends that have dominated TikTok — mermaidcore, cottagecore, etc. — that were somehow everything and nothing at the same time. There have also been many plays on Megan thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer”: “rat girl summer,” “corporate girl summer,” etc.
One commenter that Caitlyn agreed with also suggested that the backlash against blueberry milk nails could be because “People don’t like the illusion of choice shattering, and being confronted with the reality that everything is being sold to you in some way or another.”
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