I love watching luxury girl content on TikTok. Operation_niki aka Niki’s Side Of Cleantok is one of my favorites. She wakes up, does all this fancy stuff with her bedding, makes fancy drinks using all her luxury products and tech, cleans her hour beautifully, labels shit and does it all with immaculate skin care, taking care of her family, and looking flawless. I LOVE every minute of it.

I watch her while wearing last night’s pajamas at work (yes, I work from home), chipped finger and toes nails, breath on crank, a house with piles everywhere, and a strong possibility it’s been more than 24 hours since I took a shower. I’d drinking pure leaf unsweet tea, eating a breakfast sandwich from wherever had the shortest line (I probably forgot to grab my husband anything) and looking at a layer of dust that now has an entire village of Who’s that I couldn’t possibly kill!

When I watch Niki, I legit enjoy the content and think everything she’s doing is amazing. I used to watch girlies like her and try to adopt their habits in hopes it would result in a overall healthier happier life. I’d buy the glass cups and straws with the bubble ice. My skin care routine was a 12 steps process with an acrylic stand to highlight each product. My fancy mop and vacuum were supposed to making doing chores more enjoyable. But after spending too much money and finding supplies and products expiring before I could even build up the habit, I realized that luxury life ain’t for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I like finer things and I can be real bougie about the things I want and how I like them. But there’s a level of grunge to me that is.. well, it exist. I’m the girl that expects to valet park my car at a Red Roof Inn. I don’t wait in lines and I absolutely will not drink kool aid but that line is too a strip club and that kool aid is at a cook out. It’s like wearing holey underwear under a ball gown, I’m unpolished.. The odds are, ADHD be a truth teller, that I’ve forgotten to do something that would make most people go “ewww!.” Did you brush your teeth today, Paula? I hope so! Did you put on deodorant? Probably not! Are those cleans socks? Unlikely! So how’s your mental health? Better!

As much as I enjoy Luxury Girl tiktok (that’s what I call it anyway), I can’t put in the energy to be that girl when I’m putting my full energy into just being. This truth took a long time to realize and a level of self awareness that I didn’t get until after 35 years old. I won’t beat myself up any longer for not fitting into that mold.

I discovered Niki’s page only this year for the record, so she was never a culprit in making me feel like I needed to be more polished. She was just being her and I like it. I like it best while just being me.

Speaking of Tiktok, I got blocked by Jackie Aina for expressing my non-lux-ness on her page. I said something about how I’d love to hang out with her and her husband since we had so many similarities but that we are just regular folks so they’d have to seat on metal chairs and drink outta plastic! She blocked me! I guess she might be too lux for metal chairs! Was that shady? My bad, boo!