The Aesthetic Trap of CleanTok

How Race, Gender and Algorithms Shape the Social Media Economy

The performance of cleanliness on social media carries a weight that almost never becomes part of the visible narrative. image credit: Pexels.com/Sherman Trotz

CleanTok has become one of the most strangely soothing forces on the internet, where sparkling countertops, stocked pantries and slow Sunday resets offer an escape from real life. Sinking into this calming rhythm, many viewers miss the actual reality: The entire aesthetic rests on a labor structure that is racialized, gendered and shaped by algorithmic forces deciding who becomes visible, who disappears and who earns pennies for work that platforms and monetizes at scale. 

CleanTok rarely shows the exhaustion of filming after night shifts, caring for elders, juggling childcare or managing multigenerational homes, which is the real context for many Black Southern women. Instead the platform rewards the surface-level calm, while the actual labor remains invisible, reinforcing a historical pattern where Black women’s work is consumed but not valued. Looking toward 2026, several shifts are becoming clear...

According to reporting in The Independent on the massive rise of CleanTok, the hashtag has already surpassed 150 billion views. That figure alone signals the genre isn’t marginal but central to digital culture.  

Yet as scholars like Isabel Sykes explain in her study “The Romanticisation of Domestic Labour on TikTok,” the platform consistently reframes domestic labor as soft femininity, self-care or productivity rather than honest labor that requires emotional, physical and temporal investment. This reframing becomes even more complicated when Black women participate – particularly Black women in the American South where the history of domestic labor is inseparable from slavery, Jim Crow and generations of undervalued and unseen household work. 

When Black creators step into CleanTok, we’re not simply watching them clean. We’re watching how historical expectations meet technological gatekeeping. The pressure for Black women to maintain immaculate homes and appear ever composed didn’t begin with TikTok. The southern kitchen has always been a political site shaped by forced plantation labor, segregated domestic work and persistent wage inequality that follows Black women to this day. Two Southern creators offer important context here, not as subjects of critique but real public figures whose work illuminates the pressures and structures shaping the CleanTok ecosystem.

In Atlanta, the home decor and DIY creator Ashley Dixon known online as AlexanderReneeDesign shares brightly lit transformations, pantry reorganizations and steady cleaning routines that reflect the aesthetic patterns the algorithm loves. She has spoken publicly about her mission in a profile with Canvas Rebel Ashley Dixon Canvas Rebel interview. Her videos appear effortless, but each clip requires intense labor in the cleaning itself as well as staging, filming, editing, sound selection and posting on a schedule that keeps the algorithm satisfied. 

In Dallas, Carlos D. Harris Jr., who has been profiled by Ebony for blending men’s grooming fashion and home cleaning content, offers another angle into the genre. His visibility shows men participate in this space too and that Black men, in particular, complicate the idea that domestic content always reinforces gender norms. Yet even his presence exists inside a system where the algorithm rewards the same formula: brightness, calm repetition and transformation. 

The truth is creators work for themselves but also for an invisible boss. The algorithm. It  sets expectations without ever saying a word.  A 2024 study by E Mastantuono, “A Study of the Relationship Between the TikTok Algorithm and Creator Behaviour,” demonstrates how TikTok’s algorithm pressures creators into consistency, niche maintenance and predictable content patterns that determine whether a video will be circulated widely. This pattern aligns with a separate analysis, on algorithmic amplification which shows how TikTok pushes content that fits its internal preferences generating loops where certain aesthetics are repeatedly elevated.  

This becomes even more layered for Black Southern creators because domestic labor has never been neutral in Black Southern life. The Jim Crow Museum details how the mammy stereotype was created to justify the exploitation of Black women’s labor by painting them as naturally suited for servitude. CleanTok doesn’t recreate the mammy stereotype directly, but it sits inside that historical shadow and many Black women describe cleaning as a cultural ritual tied to dignity protection and survival as explored in the study. When these realities meet the algorithm, the result is an aesthetic of domesticity that looks calming online but carries a weight that almost never becomes part of the visible narrative. 

CleanTok rarely shows the exhaustion of filming after night shifts, caring for elders, juggling childcare or managing multigenerational homes, which is the real context for many Black Southern women. Instead the platform rewards the surface-level calm, while the actual labor remains invisible, reinforcing a historical pattern where Black women’s work is consumed but not valued. Looking toward 2026, several shifts are becoming clear and one is that more creators will diversify their platforms moving beyond TikTok toward YouTube, longform content newsletters and subscription communities, where they have more control over their work and are less vulnerable to sudden losses in visibility. 

Another shift is an increase in public demands for algorithmic transparency as creators, researchers and regulators confront the racial and aesthetic biases embedded in recommendation systems that affect who earns enough to survive from their content and who remains hidden. There is also the emergence of creators who choose to show messier homes, imperfect routines and unfiltered realities, refusing the illusion that life can be organized into perfect bins or that cleaning can always be soft, gentle or therapeutic. These creators disrupt the expectation that women, and especially Black women, must perform constant calm competence for digital audiences. 

CleanTok is not a frivolous trend; it’s a site where gender, race, technology and labor converge, and where Black creators navigate a world that profits from their work while erasing the histories that shape it. The real question as we approach 2026 is whether the creators whose labor sustains this genre will gain more control, recognition and protection, or whether the algorithm will continue to extract far more from them than it ever offers in return.