although i dont want kids, i often fantasize about showing them younger pictures of myself. heres your mom with her first boyfriend who introduced her to a version of los angeles she only imagined. heres your mom at her favorite music festival when she was 16 and unaware that shell never love music as much as she did then. heres your mom when she first moved to nyc and spent every thurs-sat drinking until she puked her brains out. heres your mom on an island with the actual love of her life who she stopped drinking for.
it would be utterly chic and truly artistic of me to have a physical, tangible visual archive: scans, prints, polaroids. something i can hold in my two hands, something i can rub and feel in between my fingers i pray to go back in time. it was miss intellectual susan sontag who once wrote, “to collect photographs is to collect the world,” and i want to collect it all!
i do have a very small one from when i was a teenager interested in ~vintage~ cameras (honestly, truly thanks to dianna argon’s character in i am number four). but most of my photos exist on my phone and somewhere up in the cloud. surely im not alone in this. the digitalization — and more importantly, the instagramization — of photography changed the way we produce and consume images, making them omnipresent and in doing so, turning them into passive ideas we mindlessly scroll through. we no longer devote a vigilant eye when coming across one nor place immensevalue on the ones we execute. now we snap snap away, choose one worthy of likes to share, and let the other 100 replicas take up storage space.
since enjoying the craft and vision of photography (and videography), ive always wanted to be someone who consistently documents my life. to sentimentalize experiences, my existence. this desire ends when i realize people are really bad at taking pictures of me. how do they not know my perfect angle is above and slightly slanted like scene queens? i can just take pictures of my surroundings and relationships, but then it becomes a purely observational act. a life that encompasses me more than the life i lived. continuing with sontag’s “on photography essay,” “photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation.”
or as modern philosophers might argue, pics or it didnt happen.
im constantly stuck between wanting to ~live~ in the moment and wanting to ~capture~ said moment for eternity. i want to live my life to its fullest potential, not wasting a second caught up in its perceived framing. i want to have something to look back to that transports me to a specific time, reliving the exact feeling over and over again. even more, i want to have live a life like the artists i romanticize, even filling those watching with envy.
since im a writer (i’m a writer btw like .. did i mention i’m a writer ??? idk if u guys like know this but i write sometimes, no biggie it’s jus like i’m a Writer ….), one would think that in place of a visual archive, i might have hundreds and hundreds of journals chronicling every second of my life in excruciating detail. the insides would consist of lyrical musings on my inner and outer world a la joan didion, anaïs nin, virginia woolf, etc. instead, i have like three half-filled ones with a majority of pages saying something like “i hate my life and i want to die.”
its not that im suicidal, its just im a self-proclaimed sad girl who feels too much and only remembers to write in her diary when shes feeling like she hates her life and wants to die. i also have a very small vocabulary and have not figured out an elegant way to say “i hate my life and i want to die.” there are absolutely occasions when i love my life and i want to live, but i never reach for a pen when those instances occur. its easy to complain and turn myself into a victim, much harder to rejoice in the realization that this is the life i always dreamt of. even harder to accept that thats the case and yet i still sometimes hate my life and want to die. cue pretty sick’s self fulfilling prophecy.
im slowly starting to change that — mainly because im convinced semiotext(e) will one day ask me to write a memoir and i will need to remember what happened in my life to get that done. writing about the little specificities will help my craft, perhaps even turn it a bit poetic! although that may not even matter because nobody reads and everybody prefers the idea of a writer much more! maybe it’ll even help me enjoy the mundane parts of my life as well! like how the trees along my walk to work change from pink to green to orange before falling off so i can crunch them. a physical, vibrant rebirth. a manifestation of time passing, similar to the one i crave to have.
i even bought a 2002 digital camera on ebay. i swear i wanted one before everyone got theirs because im oh so waaaaay ahead of the trends and oh so not like annnnny other girl. then it became too predictable and i couldnt bring myself to make the purchase. but alas i submit as im determined to make this substack an early aughts blog. and just like jotting down every second of my life, possibly through this new lens, i will find everything a bit more appealing. again with sontag, “it hardly matters what activities are photographed so long as photographs get taken and are cherished.”
however, while making these changes, im afraid im spending too much time thinking about how my life will be perceived rather L.I.V.I.N.G said life…….! the moment i decide to record something, it’s changed forever — time erupts. im no longer in the present, im in the future nostalgically looking into the past. “haunted by,” according to sontag, “tacit imperatives of taste and conscience.” but is it possible that this is when youre enjoying life to the fullest — the seconds in your life where you’re like, yeah….. i love my life and i want to live?!???! this might just be an inherent symptom of gen z’s Romanticize Your Life manifesto i naturally succumb to as a ‘98 baby, but hey remember, i may be CRINGE but at least i’m FREE <3
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on a spring tuesday of last year, i walked into my apartment building and found a familiar package. there were only two notable differences: a boxier font and a location change. in place of helvetica and american, this parcel boasted eurostile and los angeles.
despite being two separate entities, these branding changes were the only real differences between each company — each lived philosophies based on sweatshop-free, made-in-the-usa garments with dov charney as their founder. i have received multiple orders from american apparel, yet i can only recall shopping at los angeles apparel once. and the one time i did was only as an attempt to save myself from spiraling deeper into an identity crisis because i had died with american apparel.
but before all of this, canadian dov was just a horny libertarian college student infatuated with american culture. he sold t-shirts in his dorm at tufts university before dropping out to pursue his business dreams full-time: producing wholesale somewhere in north carolina with vertical integration. in 1997, he moved to los angeles, inside the famous downtown factory. 6 years later, dov opened the first american apparel retail on sunset blvd in hipster mecca, echo park.
for millennials, the american aughts was an era dripped in what is now referred to as indie sleaze. it was ironic living during the bush era. it was girl power amidst misogynistic raunch culture. it was logo mania fatigue at the dawn of the recession. this was the perfect backdrop for american apparel to flourish. they offered brandless clothing inspired by 70s and 80s fashion, appealing to hipsters’ inclination towards vintage. most items were eroticized basics, versatile enough for a multitude of subcultures while parodying conservatism.
“without its creator at the helm,” kate flannery opens her epilogue in strip tees: a memoir of millennial los angeles, “the company became unmoored and unfocused and found itself in bankruptcy court in 2015 and again a year later. in 2017, major wholesale t-shirt producer gildan activewear stepped in to pick up the pieces. they bought the brand name and then ironically moved the production overseas. the factory was shuttered not long after, and retail stores closed worldwide.”
since dov felt his baby was maliciously stolen from him by a greedy, puritanical board, he decided to try again. in 2016, he created los angeles apparel, an identical twin-like company. in the wise words of hadley freeman for the guardian, “hey, why fix something that only broke because of a few allegations of sexual impropriety?” to rekindle the effect he had on young adult culture, los angeles apparel manufactures the same styles in the same factory with the same workers.
as a continuum of its predecessor, it’s safe to assume that the cult dedication to american apparel would swiftly transfer to los angeles apparel — yet it didn’t. at the time of writing, american apparel has 1.4m instagram followers, while los angeles apparel has 205k; american apparel had more than 250 stores worldwide, while los angeles apparel has a single factory store. in 2021, when infamous indie sleaze entered the cultural conscience, mentions of los angeles apparel weren’t made. however, it would’ve been the precise time for the brand’s rise. mood boards include old american apparel pieces, regardless that the current retail site only carries seven (7) kinda ugly items. los angeles apparel carries the original silhouettes, but as such “trend” reaches a tiresome, overstated discourse, the moment for the brand to pop off is ending.
dov’s identity is part of the reason — especially when living in a post me too world — but it's also because american apparel was so much more than its athleisure-adjacent products and ethical work practices. something los angeles apparel fails to capture.
my older brother introduced me to the store, unknowingly indoctrinating me into the ethos and aesthetics. during my late middle school and early high school years, almost everything i owned came from american apparel. sofia bodysuits in pink, cream, black, and lace. high-waisted denim shorts in both dark and light wash. striped t-shirt romper. off-the-shoulder crop top, white button-down crop top, baby pink crop tank. tennis skirts in plaid, black, and white. i had transformed into a nymphet, wearing mini skirts that barely covered my ass paired with thigh-high tube socks. i remember cars honking at me as i walked home from eighth grade. i remember yelling at my mom for oversexualizing me when i donned those garments. i remember the nicest thing anyone ever said to me was that i looked like i worked at american apparel.
it's not that i dreamt of labor, per se, but i dreamt of being an American Apparel Girl™. to be an American Apparel Girl™ was to be sexy but natural, sexually liberated but barely legal, the girl next door but edgy.
earlier in that previously mentioned memoir, kate writes, “the same girls managing and working in the retail shops were also the same girls back in the headquarters designing the newest styles. and they were also the ones hiring all the new employees and scouting for new locations in cities where the company would be sure to thrive. and so it only made sense that they were also the campaign girls — the models — appearing in all the ads.” kate recalls the moment she was recruited by a future coworker telling her, “we’re more like spokesmodels… we’re the face of the company because we’re the ones running it.”
much of american apparel’s success relies on those girls and the advertisements they reigned in. this isn’t a new revelation —everyone remembers their signature amateur softcore porn photographs. barely-dressed, wide open legs, mid-orgasm faces, and bedroom settings. many of these voyeuristic images, which came to define the brand, garnered headlines and were banned by the advertising standards authority. but they weren’t just selling sex — they were selling a new, classic girl. the classic girl was integral to the brand, prophesied by their original classic girl t-shirt, which was slim-cut and clung to all the right places, unlike the boxy standard at the time.
upon seeing an ad in the factory, kate muses, “i recognized the look right away — the smile of a teenage girl up to no good… there was something so honest about the shots — just a real-life girl going about the business of girlhood, not really modeling. she didn’t even have any makeup on. it was so simple, but it worked. I couldn’t stop looking at her.”
unlike their contemporaries, american apparel didn’t retouch models, and it wasn’t to appeal to the forthcoming pseudo-body-positivity movement. actually, the ethos behind how they portrayed bodies accidentally incorporates a body neutrality thesis as they showcase women with an acceptance of their imperfections. looking at a different ad of her co-worker and friend, kate notes, “in the shot, caralee is arranged into a traditional cheesecake pose — on her back with her legs kicked up high and crossed at the ankles. the bottoms of her feet are blackened with floor grunge. two golden crescents marbled with stretch marks peek from the edge of her hot shorts, and on one is a screaming red blemish. i couldn’t take my eyes off that zit — it’s what made the ad work. it was real and intimate, like a snapshot you’d take with your best girlfriends and hide in an old coffee cam in the back of your closet when you’re practicing the ropes of sexiness, just getting a feel for it.”
along with publishing the folds and blemishes of women’s bodies, american apparel ads displayed a variety of girls before consumers demanded diverse representation. in doing so, they offered their debaucherous lifestyle to everyone. there was even a campaign staring a 62-year-old woman in her underwear. ALTHOUGH! it must be noted, that all models were still conventionally attractive, slim-thick, and light-skinned. it was the 2000s after all and dov had a thing for the racially ambiguous girlies……..! when the ads didn’t feature employees, they then featured dov’s girlfriends and friends until he went even further, casting porn stars sasha grey, lauren phoenix, and faye reagan. this may have just been a business strategy imagined by dov’s libido and contrarian tendencies, but, in doing so, it positioned sex workers as real women and continued showcasing a multifaceted womanhood.
there was also the famous meet so and so campaign, which included the model’s name and a brief bio. besides becoming my own photoshop layout, this structure unflattened and fully fleshed out the girls. they were no longer nameless bodies, selling an elusive image. we got to know the girls as if they were the cooler older sisters we wanted to emulate. as julie zerbo writes in dazed, “american apparel had a very precise identity to uphold: attainable aspiration – those hot, ‘real’ twenty-somethings that appeared in their images could be you.”
i was determined to become Her, so i did what any early teenage girl growing up in los angeles would do. during weekend visits, i begged my dad to drive me 45 minutes up the five freeway to the factory so i could buy rejected items with minimal defects for a lower price. i forced my brother to take me to the store where his friend worked so she could give me her employee discount since we were the same size. i took pictures in the dressing room. i took pictures of the brown city shopping bags. i took a picture with my webcam as i laid in bed wearing a bodysuit for one of their contests. i didn’t win, but american apparel did reblog it…….! (the image eventually made its way to ed tumblr, who added #thinspo). after i uploaded the photo on instagram, the nerdy guy i sat next to in some classes — who was just looking out for me — texted me, what the hell are you posting on instagram? i replied, north posted this while playing games on my phone. not sure why or how she chose it but i'm not complaining!
i was beginning to embody the same smile of a teenage girl up to no good. of course, this was after dov was already out of the company, but an american apparel renaissance was happening online during 2013-2016 thanks to girlies like barbienox, mynamesdiana, and pixiejoanna.
but to fully understand them, we must first look back to cory kennedy, who the cut declared the internet’s first it girl. she ushered a new online era after arriving on the cobrasnake dot com in 2005, wearing a lacoste tennis dress at a post-hardcore show. of the picture, in a 2007 la times profile, shawn humbler writes “with her doe eyes and her brown hair asunder, it was clear that her childlike face, surrounded by all that l.a.-noir, had its own gravitational pull.” she appeared innocent and authentic, a combination that continues to captivate our youth-obsessed culture. she became the cobrasnake’s muse, intriguing the site’s visitors one image at a time. who was this ordinary minor partying with a-listers galore? people became obsessed, dissecting her outfits and following her blog — even celebrities from lindsay to paris wanted to be her friend. shawn continues, “if it’s hard to characterize, it may be because hers is a dispatch from uncharted cultural waters. never before have media, technology and celebrity collided with adolescence at such warp speed.” thanks to blogs, myspace, and tumblr, the internet became a place for a new iteration of the celebrity — everyday, regular, beautiful people celebrated for their impressive taste and lifestyle. cory was one of them. she had a distinct personal style that appeared both effortless and trendy, proving to have a tight grasp on the culture zeitgeist. she walked so modern-day influencers could run.
enter two such influencers: barbie and diana. they were thicc tumblr girlies in new york, gaining a following for their inclusive modeling careers. however, they weren’t actually fat and still held a desirable hip-to-waist ratio but that’s a story for another time! by day, they were american apparel retail associates, often taking pictures while on the clock and appearing in campaigns — a standard practice for American Apparel Girls™ (kate includes ads from the saturdays where they roller skated in store and the summer days they splashed around in a kiddie pool outside to lure in potential costumers in strip tees). their digital footprint offered an inside look at the store, which demystified and romanticized the job. it was early social media marketing at play — with every new follower they gained from their internet celebrity status, they added another devotee to the brand that kick-started their careers.
on the other hand, joanna was a normal fangirl like the rest of us. she didn’t work at american apparel or modeled for them; she just posted pictures head-to-toe in the clothes. since she was a skinny, white girl with a skinny, white, sleepy boyfriend, she content-farmed him, ushering in a choke me daddy era of tumblr. he’d hold a gun to her head, wrap his hand around her throat, and stick his fingers in her mouth. they’d emphasize how much smaller she was than him — his big hand on her tiny thigh, him carrying her so they both fit in a mirror. goals, goals, goals.
though not officially affiliated with american apparel, it was hard to separate the two. she even posted a quick video fawning over their clothes, unable to decide what to buy. if we wanted to be a waifish, sexy girl down for anything, we just needed her uniform: no bra, tattoo choker, and american apparel. the company eventually noticed and brought the two along for a shoot, a black friday haul, and a skimpy halloween guide. this collaboration demonstrated that anyone could work their way into the company — that the American Apparel Girl™ could be materialized from the outside.
los angeles apparel may be presenting similar girls in similar positions within their ads, but they’re not fully tapping into the influencer-type girl nor offering a compelling persona. it may be because we’re currently oversaturated with influencers, making the digital world feel like a place where everyone is one. or because the seductive adolescent can no longer exist within our ongoing awareness of power dynamics within sexual relationships. either way, it is clear that american apparel may be damned without the twisted, accidental genius dov — but los angeles apparel is completely doomed without the Classic American Apparel Girl™.
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the ideal answer is both. the romantic Artist answer is overwhelming inspiration. unfortunately for me, its motivation and yet im hardly ever motivated…!
still riding with the ~new year, new me~ mindset and figuring out what exactly i want to write or even do (literally after i made a whole post about how i want to stop thinking about my online image i was thinking about rebranding myself as an influencer 🤦♀️), ive been trying to tap into that capital a artist process.
my first goal is to learn more about capital f fashion, historically and critically. i started reading fashion criticism: an anthology put together by francesca granata and listening to early dressedepisodes as i wait for the new season of articles of interest. one day i read on linkedin someone was jia toleninto’s research assistant so now i daydream about being avery truffelman’s research assistant. i think it sounds like the perfect job but my boyf thinks i would hate it. sometimes he knows me better than myself, love is often annoying like that.
what i do know though is that im really good at getting high and watching shitty(?) girly movies. mostly i pull from this list. although it is my favorite past time atm, i feel guilty about not using that time on something productive instead. blah blah capitalism has ruined me blah. im trying to get high n watch fashion shows instead. at least ill learn something if i can actually remember it! sounds perfect in theory but ive only done it twice so far. the first time i fell asleep, you know indacouch and all dat. the second time i was like lowkey this is long as fuck! it was probably only like twenty minutes tops but time is eternal when youre high.
im a miu miu meets dilara findikoglu girly OBVI, but i watched vivienne westwood, alexander mcqueen, and yohji yamamoto — all late 90s btw — because dont kill me but i have like zero fashion knowledge LOL. thats the real reason why i havent became a super sexy fashion blogger yet. thats the thing about me, i want and want and want but dont actually DO. i think thats called uhhhhh mental illness <3
ive also been heavily stalking the style rookie archive too. theres just something inherently special about girls uploading ootds on blogspot and something inherently sexy about a bare-bones website layout. reading friends blogs and leaving comments is very intimate and wholesome too, even if its uploaded online for the world to see. i used to do it a bit back when i had my first blog and i wish i didnt take that for granted — only really commenting to self promo. i have a few writer friends, but tbh im more tapped into the diy bushgaze music scene because of my boyfriend and friends. i go to shows and everyones like do u play and im like no i write and then everyones like oh cool can u write about my band and im like i love u but no ;* i also just think its cunty that this little teenager name drops petra collins casually. i did this with petra, petra took this picture, me and petra. bitch i wish!
in the same manner, im trying to listen to ~classic~ music. you know sonic youth, radiohead, nirvana, joy divison, etc. its kinda hilarious because im an editor for a music blog and have done quite a bit of music journalism while only listening to shoegaze, burger adjacent acts, and like tumblr soft grunge. its actually hilarious because i made fun of my boyfriend for liking this straight boy music and refused to listen because im supposed to be the one with Taste. and its really hilarious because i did the same shit with my ex and then got rly into 2010s emo pop punk or whatever you want to call it after we broke up. i guess white boys sometimes do go off!
most times i feel bad that im behind on finding my inspirations. even my younger sibling who used to tap into everything *i* was into has found their own references, style, likes, etc. and an actual dignified one at that! ♡‧º·(˃̣̣̥o˂̣̣̥)‧º· i spent my entire teenage life on the internet but wtf was i doing! spent too much time trying to be an aesthetic ig account i guess 😭! but mayb that means ill hit my prime later which is actually kinda chic. thirty, flity, thriving……..
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oh, another new year! oh, another chance to reinvent yourself with all those hopes and dreams you’ve been putting off for the last 10 years!
in 2014, i wanted to be a super sexy famous fashion blogger. i created a blogspot and wrote: “not only is summer great for sleeping all day and not having to care about anything, but it gives you more free time so you can enjoy yourself and life. what better way to enjoy both, than making a blog? so long story short, welcome to my blog, that i would use to write about my life, fashion, music, and anything else that comes to mind.” still so tru bestie.
following my blog announcement, i wrote about kendall jenner’s bleached brows in a givenchy fw ad campaign. then i wrote a week in my life type thing, a concert review, and some sort of dress code feminism manifesto. my origin story of being a rookie mag tumblr girlie never fails. i wrote 23 posts that year, 43 the following, and 5 the year after. the decline was mostly because i had gotten into a relationship that Totally consumed my life, and i was also embarrassed that they mightve thought of my blog as cringe. more on that trauma later xD.
i wish i didnt stop, mainly because i def wouldve been a super sexy famous blogger by now, but also because it fueled my love for writing. back then, i didnt put extra thought into the topics i explored. i shitposted candidly and excessively on anything and everything. there was no image i had to uphold. if anything, it seemed like the more you were online, the better your chance of becoming an internet star was. its because of that blog and me not knowing what da fuck i was supposed to do as an adult i decided to study creative writing in undergrad — even when i was convinced i could be a successful author who never reads.
now im 25, still trying to become a super sexy famous fashion blogger, and falling short because im overthinking what to write. the older i get, the more i yearn for those good old days — when i was still a baby on the internet, documenting all aspects of my life — while they become harder and harder to reach. im even struggling just to sit down and write because i want to make sure its Perfect. since this is a solo act, there’s no one to blame but myself if it isnt. i may have been cringe then, but at least i was Free!
the archive for socuteithurtsdotsubstackdotcom is pretty random as well. an opener about not knowing what to write, an in/out list, my fashion inspo (i def predicted office siren btw, but i still think dweeb couture is a cuntier name), and a day in my life at the pumpkin patch. old habits DIE HARD.
im more proud of my posts from the last year, the more cultural/internet fashion analysis ones. u could tell i started listening to podcasts and video essays, diving deeper into my intersecting interests. because of these, i feel like i have to follow that pattern — brand myself as an alt internet marxist —which might be possible since i am addicted to the online world, but i miss personal writing too. the days when i thought i would be the next sosadtoday. yet, since ive been in a healthy 4-year relationship, stopped drinking and partying, started therapy and meds, my life is normal-ish. theres no life-shattering drama or unbelievable manhattan socialite tales to tell. turning my life into a female manipulator best-seller would be a snooze fest. i honestly dont cry that much anymore, either, so even a sylvia plath/elizabeth wurtzel persona is difficult to have. and then theres my fantasies about climbing the magazine corporate ladder as i become a chic fashion critic turn magazine editor-in-chief.
theres all these different routes to go down. i can envision myself doing and being happy with them all, too, which is why im unsure what direction to take when it comes to this blog. im afraid of pigeonholing myself or even worse: choosing the wrong label. in the age of internet self-commodification, the content i upload becomes my Identity. growing up alongside the birth of influencers has rewired my brain to crave validation and attention on my entire being from strangers online. i imagine the way my ex-crush, the person i used to be friends with, and the girl i want to be sees my digital footprint. hot. smart. funny. lowkey. talented. thriving. i look at myself through someone looking at me or whatever john berger said.
i can try to do it all — explore all forms and content. this is where im currently at and what im trying to do. but i cant help but feel like im losing the chance of growing a dedicated audience. we follow people for their specific personality, how we assume theyll post and what we assume theyll create. we get mad when a band changes their sound after their first album or when an indie darling breaks into the mainstream. without a specific beat, i drown in the sea of twenty-something-years old writers living in new york city. if i dont obey in branding myself or at least in a way that appears effortless, i gain no clout, which is capital within our attention economy. where will i ever go without that? how will people read my words if nobody knows i exist?
i know i should be writing for myself because i love it oh so much and theres a deep innate calling within me, but all i ever wanted was to make a living off my writing. at least enough that allows me to quit my day job and provide some financial stability. i know i picked the wrong medium if this is my end goal. there was never much money in publishing and journalism to begin with, but in the early 2000s it appeared doable or at least partly. there was the big boom of bloggers and digital media, which ultimately replaced print. most of those are either shutting down completely or facing sufficient layoffs almost weekly. i feel delusional to believe amidst all this that im special enough — my writing strong enough — to make it. but that delusion is also the very thing i need to keep me going. theres no plan b; this is my only option. of course that only stresses me out more…….<3
as the years go by and i have yet to become a super sexy famous fashion blogger, im reminded that im doing the internet — and ultimately writing — all wrong. there are many, many people younger than me doing far, far more stuff than me. my time is running out and the time i do have left is wasted as i play catch up. although i would KILL to NO LONGER BE PERCEIVED (not even in a quirky meme way, but in a i have anxiety and if everyone doesnt love me i will DIE way) and for my writing to exist on its own — for my writing to gain a readership based on the merit of its words and not the caricature i represent — i have unfortunately chosen a craft heavily tied to the spectacle. and the connection between the two only continues to flourish.but isnt this part of existing as a girl as well so did i ever even really have a choice!?!?!?!!!?!
im not sure if i should even be saying this or why im doing it. being vulnerable and honest in this way will kill any cool girl, idgaf! image i may have had crafted — although i doubt i even exist within one. maybe its to show that i really care (ew), i put hard effort (ew ew), and i want to continue doing that while i find my voice though this blog? (ew ew ewwwwwww). or Possibly its just another rebrand announcement…! whatever it is and whatever the reason may be, i hope you will continue to follow along on this journey... (๑>◡<๑)₊˚⊹ ♡˖⁺‧₊˚ ⭒⋆ ⁺。 ˚⋆ ♡₊‧. ˚ 。⁺
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at the ~all-grunge, all-girls~ show, my eyes departed from the church stage to the butterfly flying on a girl’s upper back. her tattooed wings matched the ones spread across my shoulders, the ones i swore i wanted to match my mom’s fairy wings, and absolutely not because of the multitudes of hot girls with butterfly tattoos ive seen online. before passing my phone over to my boyf, i wrote in my notes app:
is this how i look from da back
they nodded and laughed in agreement (an action that often occurs when dating a comedian like me).
i pouted and continued in the app:
dimes coded 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
referring to the fact that one of the performers that night is associated with the neighborhood (at least in my head since they are clouted w downtown manhattan vibes) and managed to bring its crowd along the 42-minute commute to ridgewood — a feat in itself. with my zoe kravitz in x-men-type wings, which resemble nothing like my mom’s, i signified myself as one of them, although my true twenty-something ridgewood local persona isnt far off. we’re all transplants with an inflated ego that convinces ourselves our talents make up for gentrifying and barely surviving in the city. next to the girl with the butterfly tattoo was a bleach-blonde friend with a shade similar to my own over-processed tresses.
i’m blonde like everyone too .. 😭 i can never jus BE
i was overly dramatic, but right (as always). since developing an understanding of Taste, i have been stuck in a cycle of thinking: i finally found myself — just for everyone else to slowly start dressing in the exact same way. somehow, my newfound interests and personal styles always become a summarized meme for Girls Just Like Me. initially, it was through a starter pack, then those transformed into some type of core, and now it’s developed into girl something.
the discourse around such transition, which relies heavily on barely-there critiques of fast fashion, even faster trends, and ~gender essentialism,~ is trite, tiresome, and one big distraction. online publications are only rewording the same message to position themselves as progressive, ethical, and somewhere along the political left without adding any additional thoughtful premise. fast fashion sucks, and tik tok killed personal styles, and cant girls just have fun online!
and obviously, i agree to an extent. im a typecast, after all...! BUT! in my humble opinion of my brilliant, sexy mind, i think it's much more interesting to look at how these cores and girls, ultimately created by an algorithm, objectify while trying to appeal as some feminist liberation — two things that cannot logically, rationally coexist but “happen” all the time! must I remind you, We Live In A Society...
within this society, apps have been created as a technology form to socialize, connect, and share through user-generated content. interactions between users become the livelihood of the app, and without them, the apps would cease to exist. this is an obvious statement, but it’s also a crucial one. social media is disguised as democratized platforms to form communities while primarily relying on the never-ending — often isolating — doom scroll. platforms don’t want you to actually foster interpersonal relationships because if you did, you would spend less time on the app. instead, it’s about the illusion, about the possibility.
timelines and feeds, or whatever you choose to call them, used to be organized reverse chronologically, displaying posts created by those you follow or are “friends” with based on the time they were published. in 2011, that changed when facebook introduced an algorithmically curated news feed. 5 years later, both instagram and twitter followed suit. these new systems prioritized virality, showcasing posts based on predicted engagement rather than displaying users you actually follow. our oomfs are gone; randos take their place, changing the apps from a place to curate connection, community, and kinship to one where we strive to become an overnight sensation — even if we refuse to admit it. no app has been as successful as tiktok.
i’m not on tiktok because the algorithm’s accuracy scares me, but from what I gather — through listening to friends' experiences and reading a 3-partseries by sf-based writer and technologist eugene wei — it's the most addicting and most convincing. in his essays, wei explains how the app’s interface, which displays a single video, continuously expands and provides a large data set, training the algorithm to accurately digest users’ reactions for peak performance. the app relies on a positive feedback loop, connecting videos to viewers within their specific, secluded taste (foodietok, booktok, movietok, etc) without needing to follow people or grow an audience. in this way, tiktok becomes an entertainment app, rather than a social app, but masked in authenticity as videos are created by normal, common people. we trust them since we can relate to them (hello marketing 101).
but as theodor adorno and max horkheimer theorize in the culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception within late capitalism, entertainment is commodified into a mass-produced industry promoting conformity and reinforcing existing power structures. they write, “furthermore, it is claimed that standards were based in the first place on consumers’ needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance,” which sounds awfully similar to the reasoning behind facebook’s decision to turn the news feed into a “personal newspaper.” the change is supposed to serve us better, it highlights the posts we hypothetically want to see. but “the result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger. no mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest.” tech oligatchs behind the algorithm, international men who know little to nothing about the Hell Of Being A Teenage Girl, have engineered it to have a mind of its own, allowing it to curate culture on their behalf. they are then weaponizing it to mold us into consumer pawns for the dominant class.
tiktok’s magical algorithm reads behavioral patterns and studies time interactions. it does so much more than a non-stem human can conceptualize or fully understand, with the sole goal of keeping you hooked, keeping you addicted. for the girlies, this means flooding feeds with videos about mini-micro trends, creating one — or even two — for every personality. the fact that most of these micro aesthetics overlap and are repackaged versions of each other doesn’t even matter; instead, it's actually necessary. as adorno and horkheimer later write, “marked differentiations… depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers. something is provided for all so that none may escape.”
most girls come into my day job for products they hear about on the app. in 2018, drunk elephant dropped d-bronzi bronzing drops, but we didn't constantly sell out of them until early this year after they went viral. it was the same thing with charlotte tillbury’s flawless filter and contour wands. now it’s happening with one/size’s setting spray. when i worked the register, most items i checked out came from tiktok wishlists. rare beauty liquid blush, refy brow sculpt, glow recipe watermelon toner, summer friday lip balms, etc, etc.
and through their purchases, i hypothesize each girl’s personality, internalizing the algorithm. the girl who put her new dyson airwrap in her alo tote loves green smoothies, bullet journaling, and manifesting positive vibes. she’ll also say she’s in a hurry after i ask her if she wants to use her points because she thinks i have a personal vendetta to waste her time and not because it's part of my job. the girl asking if her medium-dark makeup by mario contour stick is too dark (it always is) doesn't actually want to know the truth — she’s too busy imagining how her new sculpted face will match her fashion nova sculpted body.
through these observations, i'm participating in the system that objectifies women — not sexually, but in the word’s root meaning. i'm erasing these girlies from their individual feelings, experiences, hopes, and dreams, while turning them into an object. i assume which mental illness they have — eating disorder if they post girlblogger whisper confession memes, depression if she's stuck in tumblr 2014, bpd if lana del rey is her top spotify artist. this may be true — which 21st-century girl living in Modern Society doesn't suffer from disordered eating, depression, and/or bpd, etc, etc. it's a symptom of our conditions within a racist, patriarchal, capitalist world. BUT! these niche aesthetics are transforming Real Issues With Direct Causes into glorified #justgirlythings. girls become nothing more than a pinterest mood board; mental illnesses become nothing more than a checkbox.
i couldn’t do this without the app though, and all of the conversations and memes that follow. together, they transform our consumptions into easily digestible identities while removing personal agency. these become bigger than the app itself, steeping into real life through girl-coded ads and girl internet discourse.
one may think blaming a computer process for fabricating fashion crazes is a reach, but it’s nothing new. remember when escape room appeared as a genre on spotify out of nowhere? on tiktok, there’s no proof of a set plan for a video to go viral. actually, a user usually has one popular post while the rest of the account remains in the shadows. the fyp, the page organized by the algorithm, is where the majority of users’ time is spent, where publications pick something to dissect, where sales flourish. and it works because we try and try and try and try to go viral because of what it may bring our way — from a million think pieces about the new trend you predicted with links to your account (see oldloserinbrooklyn) to an exclusive interview with a hot magazine (see subway sessions). continuing with Adorno and Horkheimer, “capitalist production so confines [us], body and soul, that [we] fall helpless victims to what is offered [us]… the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. immovably, [we] insist on the very ideology which enslaves [us].” shit, even see me currently writing this piece, hoping to be called the voice of this generation or sumn. . . .
after an unheard-of cutesy name is given to an existing style, respectable, honorable publications run pieces declaring the newest aesthetic mania and rising girl practice as a subversive exercise breaking traditional binaries. we saw it with bimbocore and the reappearance of dissociative feminism through fleabag eras and other femcel related catchphrases in 2022, with girl dinner in the summer, and now we have progressed to ultimate girlhood reclamation by tying bows on everything. but how radical could these ideas actually be if mainstream media reports on it? how radical can regressing to hot dumb girls actually be — especially if that’s what has always been expected of us? how radical can caring about absolutely nothing apart from ourselves and our consumption habits actually be? those in power, those in control of narratives, those who created the algorithm will always be looking for ways to manipulate our daily decisions to serve the status quo, to distract us from the reality that our lives aren’t as progressive as we like to think they are, to undo the developments intersectional feminists have fought for.
before all of these microtrends, before the internet was even integrated into our daily lives, frutiger aero was the dominant aesthetic of new technology. in the early 2000s, developers virtually transformed nature into glossy greens and crystal clear blues to ease our y2k bug fears. the windows’ grass hill desktop wallpaper is aptly named bliss, welcoming us to a new hopeful utopia where anything is possible with the world wide web on our side. and these tactics worked — we trust these technologies so much that we mindlessly accept cookies daily.
earlier this year, i-D and dazed ran op-eds on fruitger aero after noticing the aesthetic reappearing on social media. these nostalgic posts appeared shortly after 2022 was named the year of the micro trend, and fashion intellectualism — specifically, thinking critically about said micro trends — started growing. this wasn’t coincidental. the algorithm pushed these tiktoks to multiple fyp to, once again, relieve our nerves into trusting the internet, into trusting niche aesthetics. its just silly girl internet, like silly bubbles and fish! it’s hard to engage in any thoughtful analysis when this is the framework. and that’s exactly the point, that’s exactly why starter packs blossomed into core, which then bloomed into girl.
but to accept this girl and that girl with open arms is to accept the culture industry’s continuous practice of commodifying ourselves — and often doing the work for them. when living in a visual-based society, it's hard not to. it's quite literally how we fulfill our need to belong while often making light of our current situations. i mean, even i still proudly self-identify as a tumblr sad girl. however, these microtrends and niche aesthetics shouldn't be where our feminism starts and ends — especially since they are created by a system that wants to perpetuate cultural and social hegemony. instead, we should use them as case studies to critically engage with the world around us while pushing back against the idea that our consumptions define and flatten us.
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