Aesthetics are stripping us of any identity we may have left
The year was 2019. The final bell rang and we’d all flood out onto the streets leading us back home–which naturally took even longer because my best friend had to record five different versions of the same video to some song that was hot that week. TikTok was slowly emerging and rebranding itself from its ugly and embarrassing past as Musically.
As if we’d be performing a ritual, we’d sit around in one of our bedrooms. Sometimes drawing pictures in my head of life then is like drawing swirls in the air and faceless stick figures. But still, it’s easy to think about our bedrooms from when we were 15, they were all the same. A Crosley record player in the corner, Clairo and Billie Eilish in vinyl, a drawer reserved for hair scrunchies, an artificial hanging plant and a pair of deliberately ruined Converse–it gave them edge.
We went to a Catholic high school, so uniforms forced us to get creative with how to judge one another. Our wrists were stacked with handmade friendship bracelets made of the rainbow, our hair held up by that very scrunchie, our weight in books all stuffed into a Jansport backpack–unless you lived on Cedarbrook Court, then you had a Kånken bag–and a ridiculous stack of beaded necklaces.
It felt natural, it was right. All that scouting in the mall, for that perfect pair of checkered pants to wear on the monthly wear-what-you-want-Wednesday. Worth all of it. It brought us together, you know in math class and at lunch, to geek over what the then c-list musicians were doing and wearing and how we could be more like them.
The year is 2025. That $100 record player stopped working four years ago. I still wear Converse except at my ripe age of 22, they destroy the soles of my feet. I still adore Billie and although I no longer listen to Clairo, I still manage to tell new fans that I did listen to her in 2019. I have a fringe, 15-year-old me would’ve bullied me. I’ve got two artificial hanging plants but my style now has evolved to hanging a dried bouquet of flowers upside down pushed into the high corner of my bedroom. I don’t know, I think I saw that in my friend’s bedroom and thought it was cool. I typically change out my bags for class depending on my mood that day–if it’s a tote bag, then also depending on the strength of my shoulder blade.
The cultural and aesthetic shift that brought the year of 2020 is no surprise considering the unnatural amount of time we all forcibly spent in our bedrooms.
The natural process of growing up. I love some of the same things and now hate some of what I loved when I was 15, and it makes me sad. I was so certain at that age, about the pants I wore, the colours I hated, the best curl my hair could hold, what complimented my eyes, what silhouette looked best. I can see it so clearly, feel it in my hands, the smell of the air, the thoughts in my head, I don’t think Marina and I expected to mourn that year as much as we have.
In the digital world of clothes, makeup, bedroom decor, coffee mugs, and playlists, there’s an obsession for labels and maybe for others, a form of unity. Pinterest makes it easier, more isolating, and to me, it’s increasingly destructive; the alluring universe of aesthetics.
The internet reclaimed this term to describe the clothes you wear, the decor you choose for your bedroom, to offer you a sense of identity or easy way towards expression. Cottagecore, dark academia, light academia, e-girl, indie, vsco, Y2k, vintage, art ho, soft girl, normcore, baddie, coastal cowgirl, 90s, skater, and goblincore , to name a few.
In high school they helped us come together for the better or for the worse. Now that I’m a few years older I’ve grown more aware of how companies and influencers use social media to discreetly sell to us. The cutest coquette top. How to dress: dark academia. And even worse, the feuds between the posers and the genuine aesthetic conquerors–can you even wear a band t-shirt without being asked to name three of their songs?
A few years ago, I made it a conscious choice to not conform myself to an aesthetic the internet invented. Sure, there are commonalities between the shoes I wear and the dress I’d pick out of the five. But even when I should’ve, in theory, gravitated towards a certain aesthetic and didn’t, it made me feel like there was something wrong with me.
I was born in Mexico to a Mexican mom and Portuguese dad, we moved to Canada when I was six, and have really stayed here since. In elementary and high school, I was one of the few Latino kids in my class. I thought at the time it never really bothered me. Though once in a while, I get a foggy flashback of avoiding conversations about our backgrounds, and only ever claiming one half of me–Portuguese.
The baddie aesthetic takes a lot of inspiration from Chicano trends–a Mexican-American style that arose in the 60s and 70s–and my Mexican half has never pushed me to experiment with it out of pure insecurity and projection that I was not “Mexican enough.” So on the contrary was something more appealing to me–the art ho, my 2019 accidental aesthetic. But the same problem arose–I didn’t feel "white enough” to properly reflect what it deserved. As Becky G once said, there’s a Spanish saying, “Ni de aqui ni de alla,” (not from here nor from there). I already didn’t know who I was, what I liked, and here I had 20-somethings telling me what works for me. Internet aesthetics were taking over my life, my identity, my sense of expression.
The obvious is how unsustainable it is to adopt an aesthetic. Thank TikTok and Instagram influencers for selling you the most inconvenient four-piece closet “staples,” and wondering why you have no more than two outfits to wear. I mean majority of the time, they’re promoting items that are out of an average person’s budget. But not to worry, because when you figure this out, Shein and Temu also know what to sell to you and will endlessly promote it in every compartment on your phone. It makes me sick thinking about the money I spent during the pandemic for whatever new aesthetic I was trying out, hoping to find the one that fit me like a glove. But I didn’t, because internet aesthetics are anything but human, they’re literally our attempt at mirroring a version of ourselves that was made by fashion companies and their minions.
According to a Buzzfeed quiz, my aesthetic is cottagecore. I apparently love nature (I’m indifferent to it), I have a taste for the simple things in life, I’d pick a calm life over a big city any day (quite the opposite, really), and I’ve got a bright spirit (depends who you ask). A Style Set style quiz says I’m an office siren, “Your style is sleek and timeless with that effortless cool girl '90s vibe.” Another quiz says my style is mainly grungecore, “blending edgy looks with effortless style. Inspired by the early ‘90s, think baggy—really baggy—and layers. With distressed denim, oversized pieces, and band t-shirts, it's the perfect look for anyone wanting to rock their individuality.”
I’ll admit it, they’re good at what they do. If I spent more time on these quizzes, I’d surrender to its seductive words and pretty collages. But I don’t recognize myself in those collages. How do you illustrate someone’s being in a few photos, especially when it feels so detrimental?
I met my lifelong friend in 2019, and we spent most of our time in our bedrooms, surrounded by weird walls, and listening to Rex Orange County, and it wouldn’t have happened unless internet aesthetics made their way into our lives.
But I like Chicano-inspired makeup, but I don’t like Juicy Couture sets. I love wool sweaters, but I hate how straight jeans look on me. I hate corset tops, button-up shirts sometimes make me look too much like my mom, and I like my fringe even though sometimes the butterfly cut is tempting.
How I walk, the words I use to form my sentences, the colour of my nails, the necklace poking out of my shirt, have been a collection of things I’ve loved and hated as I’ve grown up. How do I fight against myself in collages and colour blocks? How do I become real? Do we want to be all the same? When did we lose individuality?