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A group of young women are about to try colour analysis for the first time. One says she suspects she’s not “supposed to wear gold”, and then holds up both hands swathed in gold rings and bracelets. The video cuts to the same woman with a strip of gold fabric laid across her chest. A sad trumpet sound plays before the strip is whipped off and replaced with a silver one. “See?” the analyst says. “Way better here.” The woman says: “Yeah”, but she sounds unhappy.
Colour analysis is a method of picking out the shades that suit your skin tone. After its first life in the 1980s and 90s, “getting your colours done” found a new audience on TikTok in 2024 and has only become more popular since. This clip was one of many thrown up by my Instagram feed but it stuck with me, largely because it seemed so depressing in its portrayal of the trend as something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Directions on what you’re “supposed” or “not supposed” to wear, it intimated, should be followed even if it means sacrificing your own preferences.
Some videos are more explicit, annotating photos of celebrities dressing “against their palette” with red crosses, or stating that “Wrong colours don’t whisper … they SCREAM”, as if by wearing a certain green you’re subjecting yourself or others to a form of torture.
This doctrinal tone doesn’t just extend to what colours women should allow in their wardrobe. Social media platforms are full of messaging about the “right” hairstyle, neckline or skirt length. One trend sees women telling each other to “always remember” specific combinations of necklines and hairstyles, as though there were a singular formula for successful self-presentation and we will shortly have to sit an exam. Under the guise of “etiquette”, rules reach into the most trivial parts of life: how to sit, for example, or how to eat a forkful of rice.
Part of this must come down to the economics of engagement. To “influence” someone is to affect their actions, and using the imperative mood creates a sense of authority regardless of credentials (of which I suspect most aspiring rulemakers have none). Declamatory language attests to its own gravity, urgency and universality. It’s used because it presses you to listen.
Still, I don’t think the demand is entirely confected. The thing in me that watches these videos – something in millions of us, judging by the engagement on these posts – does actually desire some guidance on how to look, live, be. It wants to get ahead of life’s uncertainties by doing the things it’s told that smart, desirable women do – to comply with broadest-possible-appeal homogeneity if that also means approval and success.
Few of us are consistently satisfied with our lives. Those few become fewer in periods of instability and living-standards decline. The rules on your feed promise a shortcut: act the right way or buy the right things and you will create a version of yourself so correct that this correctness forms a layer of insulation against the world’s problems. It’s no surprise that one of the most visible strains of rules-based content concerns “the grind”; even in the fashion and beauty posts, “elegance” often serves as an analogue for wealth.
To an extent, all this is just a rehash of established advertising principles. Good marketing doesn’t make audiences want something: it convinces them they need it. But this time our status as rule followers is a part of the promotional package. We’re being sold belief systems and gurus rather than specific jumpers or pairs of jeans. And that, I think, speaks to a broader phenomenon: a desire not only for the outcomes but for rules themselves.
We live in a moment when real-world rules feel particularly weak. That applies both at the highest geopolitical level and at the point of personal conduct. Young people feel the conventional tenets of hard work and financial prudence no longer apply, and even the rules we learn as kids – to treat others kindly or say sorry when we’ve done something wrong – our leaders now openly mock. TikTok and Instagram’s frantic energy is filling that gap, sometimes consciously. Search “rules for life” on Instagram and you’ll find millions of Jordan Petersons proselytising their way to be a person.
On an individual level, of course, lots of the rules have merit. Meditating every morning probably would make me calmer. Following the 60-second rule would help me structure my day. But I’m not convinced that happiness can come in the context of the minutely prescribed existence that incorporating more than a few would demand. You can’t discipline yourself out of your historical context; you can only find ways to face it. Friends will laugh at me writing about colour like this, given I mostly wear black, but the point is that it’s what I like.
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Francesca Newton is a writer and editor
