Being Smart is Hot Again: Welcome to the Era of the Literary It-Girl

Photos credits to @pinterest

Not long ago, the ultimate online aspiration was visual perfection. The clean girl woke up at 6 a.m., drank chlorophyll water, owned five matching workout sets, and spoke mostly in routines. She optimized her body, her morning, her habits, however rarely her mind. Now, quietly and almost rebelliously, a different archetype has appeared in her place. She still has taste. But now she also has opinions. The internet’s newest aspirational figure isn’t the wellness girl, the party girl, or even the fashion girl. It’s the girl who reads. Welcome to the era of the literary It-girl.

The New Flex Isn’t Aesthetic — It’s Intellectual

Scroll TikTok today and you’ll notice a subtle shift in what people are performing. Instead of “what I eat in a day,” you get “the media I consumed this week instead of doomscrolling.” Instead of skincare routines, you get annotated paperbacks. Instead of outfit hauls, you get personal syllabi. Reading in public, once a private, almost antisocial activity has become socially legible again. Cafés are filled with people conspicuously reading essay collections. Commutes now include underlined pages posted to Instagram stories. Margins are photographed. Passages are highlighted like their outfit details. We’re watching intellect become aestheticised. And paradoxically, that may be the very reason it’s returning.

After nearly a decade of hyper-visual social media, people are exhausted by surfaces. You can copy someone’s outfit, apartment, skincare routine, or morning schedule within minutes. But you cannot easily copy someone’s thinking. Taste became replicable.Thought did not. So culture moved to the one thing algorithms can’t easily flatten: context. Knowing why something matters now matters more than simply knowing about it. The flex is no longer just liking a reference, it’s understanding it.

The Celebrity Pipeline to Intellectual Cool

This didn’t start with academics.It started with pop stars, creators, influencers, they moved the needle. Celebrity book clubs are suddenly everywhere. Musicians are launching newsletters. Podcasts are drifting from dating advice into philosophy, art history, and politics. Cultural platforms now include reading lists, essays, and author interviews. Fans don’t just follow celebrities; they follow what those celebrities are reading. And the effect is profound.

For years, aspiration online meant proximity to luxury. Now it increasingly means proximity to ideas. The modern aspirational figure isn’t the girl with the unattainable closet. It’s the girl who can explain a concept. She references essays. She brings up an article at dinner. She understands the historical lineage of a trend. She knows why a silhouette matters. She doesn’t just consume culture, she interprets it. The new influencer currency is interpretation.

“Ironically Literate”

Of course, the internet can’t adopt something without complicating it. Alongside genuine curiosity, a second layer has emerged — performance. Books appear in carefully staged morning routines. Reading becomes content. Marginalia becomes branding. Intellectual life becomes documentable. Online, a phrase has begun circulating — a literary commonplace coined by @rubylyn_: “Ironically Literate.”

It perfectly captures the moment we’re in.

People are both sincerely engaging with ideas and self-aware that engaging with ideas has social value. They read because they want to think — but also because thinking signals identity. The book is simultaneously a tool and a prop. And that tension is exactly what makes the literary It-girl interesting. She exists between authenticity and curation.

She might genuinely love a novel, but she also knows posting it says something about her. Not wealth. Not beauty. Not discipline. Intelligence.

Why This Is Happening Now

This shift isn’t random. It’s a reaction.

We are living through the first era where thinking itself feels outsourced. Algorithms predict our interests. AI summarizes our reading. Feeds select our information before we even ask for it. The result is subtle but real: people feel cognitively passive. The response?Reclaim the brain.

Long-form media; books, essays, criticism is being reframed as resistance. Reading isn’t just a hobby anymore; it’s a way to prove you still possess attention, interpretation, and agency. In other words: When machines can generate answers, the value moves to asking better questions. So being informed, nuanced, and context-aware becomes aspirational again. Not because intellectualism is new —but because independent thought suddenly feels scarce.

The All-Around Intellectual It-Girl

The literary It-girl isn’t just a reader. She’s a curator of her own mind. She follows political newsletters, keeps notes apps full of thoughts, references films from decades before she was born, and develops oddly specific fascinations — architecture movements, translation theory, regional cinema, niche economic ideas. Her interests are hyper-specific on purpose. Because in an era of infinite sameness, specificity becomes individuality.

When everyone can dress well and access the same trends globally, intellect becomes the next frontier of distinction. Cultural knowledge functions as a kind of social signalling, but a more demanding one. You can’t fake context for long. This is why people now “show their work.” Outfit videos explain runway references. Films are analysed, not just watched. Books are discussed, not just displayed. The real status symbol isn’t owning culture. It’s understanding it.

Is It Real Or Just Another Aesthetic?

That’s the open question. Is this a genuine cultural re-engagement with ideas? Or simply self-optimisation with better branding? Probably both. Even when aestheticised, reading still requires attention. Even performative curiosity often leads to real curiosity. A staged bookshelf still contains real books. The performance may be the entry point, but the thinking often follows. And maybe that’s enough. Because in a digital environment optimized for speed, distraction, and reaction, any movement that rewards patience, interpretation, and reflection — even imperfectly — shifts culture.

The literary It-girl might not be a scholar. She might still post her annotations for validation.She might even be, at times, ironically literate. But she represents something important: A collective realization that depth feels better than constant stimulation. For the first time in years, aspiration is moving inward. And whether trend or transformation, one thing is undeniable: Being smart is hot again.