TikTok has revolutionised how our identities are marketed and moulded into ‘aesthetics’. Recently micro-labelling has surfaced as a way to commodify the human experience and categorise personality models. I saw a tweet addressing a more recent example, in ideas of the ‘warm girl’ and ‘cool girl’ - essentially images from Pinterest in warmer or cooler hues. Every minute detail of how and what we consume is taken and transformed into ways to label us for consumption and tailor us to how we want society to perceive us. Most of the time, this behaviour is self-inflicted too.
I am a product of society, and I’ve lost all sense of individualism and identity
A while ago, I read a Substack article on the cultural issues of the commodification of consumerism to complex female characters and how we replicate these traits to appear “through the eyes of a consumer.” Many of the ideas brought up relate to Laura Mulvey’s genius feminist theory, the Male Gaze - the depiction and sexualisation of a woman’s existence and how this can trigger an identity crisis. Everyone has either done or considered cutting their own hair, getting an impulse piercing, changing up their diet, etc.
As women, our brains are ingrained with Male Gaze ideologies: the patriarchy has infiltrated our livelihoods before we’ve even left the womb. There’s no surprise when we react by using every niche element of our lives to box ourselves into society's standards. Who do I want to be today? A smoothie drinking, claw clip, pilates, matching Gymshark set girl, or do I want to watch my mascara run with my tears in the mirror, listen to Lana Del Rey, and glamorise mental health disorders? Most of the time, it has nothing to do with how we want to appear and everything to do with how we want to be perceived.
We’re born into a system we cannot escape as if we’re trapped on a hamster wheel, neither running away nor towards any type of progress. Every time we change ourselves to empower our identities, simultaneously, we objectify ourselves. As Belinda says in Fleabag, we are born with pain built in. Maybe to cope with this, we’re trying to romanticise our pain in different forms of niche aesthetics. As I said in the beginning, we’re all a product of society at the end of the day.
