#as someone who has fallen down the clean girl aesthetic rabbit hole i think i needed to hear this

[myopicry]

I've recently been thinking about online aesthetics (basically glorified trends imo) and how I've noticed that they're mostly - not completely, but still very noticeabley - "aimed" at women. I'm thinking of "clean girls" and "pilates princesses" and "mob wives" and even as far back as the late 2010s vsco or soft girl. I'm also thinking about big/popular aesthetics without the word "girl" in them, like cottage core for example (an aesthetic I'm often described to have and do enjoy without necessarily actively trying to incorporate it into my life). Sure, no one is stopping a guy from being cottage core, but they're so obviously more aimed at women. (ex: the makeup or feminine clothing often at the centre of some of these aesthetics (although I firmly believe clothes and makeup =/= gender/sexe), the overwhelming usage of pictures of young women in mood boards, the female demographic which interacts with the aesthetic by a huge margin etc)

I don't think it's a bad thing in itself, but we all know by now how often aesthetics have become very centered around consumerism and can encourage harmful beauty standards, so it's interesting to me how coincidentally these very aesthetics often target women and have mainly women engaging with them. Maybe some food for thought?

BTW, when I talk about aesthetics being "aimed at" women, I'm mostly talking about the ones with the word "girl" in them (ex clean girl) since it's literally in the name and those ones often are especially consumerism centered and tend to get big thanks to tiktok or Instagram beauty/fashion/lifestyle influencers. I don't believe that all aesthetics, or even most of them, are carefully designed and spread by malicious corporations or something to prey on women. But nonetheless there is still an undeniable target audience I believe.

~🪼

jellyfish anon I swear you are in my brain sometimes because as someone who has fallen down the aesthetics wiki rabbit hole and the gender wiki rabbit hole I do in fact think about this and know a little too much about the fact these extensive wikis exist at all lmao

honestly, this topic could absolutely be the start of a research paper, as I'm sure that the history of tying femininity/womanhood to consumerism has actually been a complex trend that reflects the changing social position of women as a class over time. something about the "performance" present in the gender stereotype associated with being female. something about how men are allowed to exist without thinking how they look to others, how women are more scrutinized for the way they present. something how women's identities are tied to appearances first. maybe even something on how social media exacerbates this by adding yet another layer. a digital one, to the performance. actually, this reminds me of an interesting sort of topic to ruminate on, the performative nature of femininity and how that changes the way we even think about ourselves and identity, how we are almost trained to present ourselves for others before thinking about what we actually want for ourselves! I remember when I was first really thinking about the topic of aesthetics and femininity, I really wished I could find more opinion/analysis on the topic more than just "this aesthetic is weird and here's why" or "all aesthetics are fine and that's good" because it is a very branching subject with so much scholarly potential, but the avenues where I got my research was primarily video essays (unfortunately) and those were pretty simplistic in analysis. this ask is a good reminder that I should revisit the search for that kind of thing now that I'm (hopefully) better at research and finding more diverse bodies of work discussing this kind of stuff. obscure medium blogs and wordpress sites here I come! I am also definitely going to chew on this subject a bit now that I'm reminded of it. maybe write something once I feel like I have more of a concrete thesis in mind to explore? very fun stuff though.

keep these asks coming not only are they well written but they are an amazing start to some social analysis and discussion! literally I have been deprived of my usual rambly overthinking in the last week so it is nice to find myself here once again :)