The standard expression is that someone “cleans up nice”. I wouldn’t use the word nice here to refer to a cleaned up Leonardo DiCaprio who was in Laguna Beach on Saturday for the Oceana Annual SeaChange party. I’m not sure Leo will ever clean up nice again. But I am sure that he thinks he will. Right? Like, don’t you get the sense that in the back of his mind, he’s telling himself that if he cuts his hair and shaves, Jack Dawson Romeo will come back? Like he has it as an insurance policy. Like there’s no doubt in his mind it’s still there.
Or maybe all this is fear. Maybe if he stays this way he won’t have to confront the fact that Jack Dawson Romeo is actually never, ever coming back. Only this way he doesn’t have to confirm it.