What Do We Turn Ourselves Into When We Turn Ourselves Into Miami 10s?

It's part beauty tutorial, part identity performance.

What’s going on?

Peopleare using makeup, clever wigging, and clothes to style themselves into different kinds of “10s” (often to the sound of Foxy Brown’s “Candy”):

• To transform into a New York 10, you need contouring, highlighter, and glossy hair.

• Miami 10? More makeup and blonder hair.

• Some brave souls even tried the LA 10 look (others had existential crises over not achieving it).

What’s driving it?

It’s the convergence of a range of discourses, some of them contradictory: a growing appreciation that beauty standards aren’t universal, and that when everyone is the same kind of beautiful, it gets boring (think pushback against Instagram face and everyone getting the same nosejob).

What started with looking at beauty standards by country turned into “NY 10 vs LA 10 vs Miami 10,” and evolved further into neighborhood-by-neighborhood archetypes – like the Mayfair (London) 10. (And yes, ranking people is inherently problematic – hence the trend plays with it, critiques it, and perpetuates it, all at once.)

And finally, the idea that beauty isn’t fixed: anyone can “be a 10” if they just try hard enough to match the aesthetic code. (Though, of course, there are plenty of troll comments like “let me know when the transformation happens.”)

What does it mean?

When Margot Robbie is considered “mid” and the Clueless cast is described as “not attractive“ compared to modern beauty standards, it clear that beauty has become more about about fluency in styling, codes, and context rather than physical features. Being “hot” means being able to match your look to your niche – whether that’s by location or algorithm.

And while many brands have put in the work to deconstruct the idea of universal beauty standards, their task has also evolved: now, it’s about supporting that fluidity without flattening it. That means showing different aesthetics without tokenism – and spotlighting subcultural codes without co-opting them.

Final takeaway:

Turning yourself into a “New York 10” or a “Miami 10” shows that in 2025, beauty is constructed and performed rather than anything innate. The key is to know which aesthetic codes you’re playing with – and to understand why you’re doing it in the first place.