By Samantha Nikkol Bertis
Ever since the rise of internet usage, social media has been known to help people bond over certain interests, grow communities, and many more. But with the growth of people connecting through shared interests, comes the start of curated identities that force people to fit a mold the internet has as a trend made for consumption.
The rise of “-core” and many more of these so-called “aesthetics” have started making waves in many ways, particularly in social media. We’ve seen it all, the “clean girl aesthetic” the “royalcore”, and so many other words mixed around to fit lists of characteristics or things that just seem to fit and were given a name. It started as fun ways to connect and bond with people over similar interests in clothing, music, habits, etc. But as the culture of bunching several different things together and other people relating to it, the need to fit in gets to some.
The horror to be found in the culture of “aesthetics” is based mostly on how the performativity of it all gets in the way of people’s lives. Because, yes, aesthetics can come and bring groups of people together and there are even some reports of people being significantly happier living the way they want but we cannot just simply ignore others getting hurt by the lifestyle they try to fit into. Especially with the rise of terrifying beauty standards and the multiple trends that come hand-in-hand with it, it seems that so many people use aesthetics as a way to feel beautiful and retain an appeal and desirability to the masses.
“As our relationship with technology grows more sophisticated, and by sophisticated, I mean as our computers and algorithms begin to take over our sensibilities, our idea of beauty is becoming increasingly related to what we see on our screens.” Shanspeare, a famous online celebrity, said in her Social Media’s Obsession with Aesthetics and Curated Identities video essay that discusses topics of aesthetics we see online and how it has impacted our way of self-expression.
The culture of aesthetics harms our way of expressing style and living our life the way we want to, it also forces us to fit into molds and pushes us to do things we typically are not interested in just to be able to be perceived by people in a certain way because of a choice in aesthetic. We have been so obsessed with trying to fit in at times that it seems that every waking moment is distinguished by how well we perform in our aesthetics, how our actions can relate to embodying our preferred style, and basically just focusing on how we want to be seen by others while performing in general for our aesthetics.
Not only does following and trying to embody a certain type of aesthetic hurt people who try to mold themselves for it, but it has also allowed leeway for the overconsumption made possible by companies who try to play into the culture of aesthetics.
Melanie Suriarachchi, an author and an editor of Cainz Digest, writes “With the rise of a wide variety of influencers for every aesthetic, followers have an unlimited amount of inspiration to choose from when picking the clothing they would like to wear… The algorithms on popular social media platforms favor those who post daily, as a result, in order to capture the attention of the algorithm as well as the audience, the average fashion influencer would have to have countless outfits at arms reach to appease the algorithm. Factoring in our worsening attention spans these outfits would have to be new and improved every day.” in her article, Micro-trends and Overconsumption: Fashion Consumerism in the 21st Century. Talking about how influencers also play into the trends that aesthetics have made possible to market on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
Still, to this day, people are still forcing themselves to fit certain aesthetics to be perceived better. Many companies still play into it and hire influencers to market products especially towards a certain demographic of people at times that think that they resonate with the commodity shown just because it looks something akin to their aesthetic.
Curated identities that look like they are up to claim for people online may look appealing at first but sticking to it and wanting to be seen only in that way can kill self-expression. We can be different types of things and we can do things that don’t specifically fit the box we want to be in. We just have to keep in mind that losing ourselves to fit criteria or simply just to connect to others is never good, for others or ourselves.