In Defense of Calling Everything an Aesthetic
Constantly naming new trends — coastal grandma! Clowncore! Mob wife! — is an annoying verbal tic. Or … is it a better way of understanding the world?
On January 9, 2023, Reddit moderator TheRealMisterMan made an announcement: “This subreddit was originally, and ostensibly still is, a philosophy subreddit concerning the branch known as ‘aesthetics,’ which deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art.” Recently, the forum had been flooded with posts that distracted from its purpose — questions about niche trends like cottagecore, solarpunk, and dark academia. So the moderators started cracking down. “Posts that do not relate to the academic study of aesthetics will be removed,” TheRealMisterMan proclaimed, and image posts were banned. Questions about trending visual styles should be referred to r/aesthetic, not r/aesthetics. The two communities, distinguished by a single s, are at the crux of a struggle over how we interact with the appearance of things.
To get it out of the way, aesthetic is still defined as a theory or concept of the beautiful or, as an adjective, pleasing in appearance or relating to aesthetic experience. The definition does not currently include the word’s contemporary use as a catchall for attractive, trendy, and visually interesting or relating to a style or an image-based subculture. But in the past few years, aesthetic has drifted toward the latter set of meanings, to the extent that the “What’s my aesthetic?” newcomers are manifesting in large enough numbers to overwhelm the aesthetic philosophers.
For example: “I know one guy who has very aesthetic body and he says that he has achieved it only with running.” Or: “Why is smoking so aesthetic, like when I see old movies and they are all smoking cigarettes it’s very visually pleasing to me?” Thanks to Valentine’s Day, February is “the most aesthetic of all the months,” says YouTuber Dion the Taurus. “On the runway, Nina sometimes struggles with aesthetic,” says Michelle Visage of Nina West on RuPaul’s Drag Race. “I was a functioning alcoholic / Till nobody noticed my new aesthetic,” sings Taylor Swift.
The use of aesthetic as a synonym for cool accompanies a mania for labeling things as “aesthetics.” And so many things: Beyond crossover hits like “coastal grandmother” or “office siren,” hundreds if not thousands of aesthetics are catalogued online. A Wiki on the platform Fandom has entries for “Dutch Golden Age,” “military e-girl,” “clowncore,” “femboy,” “school anti-bullying positivity reinforcement,” and “2000s virtual singer.” There is a specific joy in spinning an aesthetic out of obscure, ephemeral references. For example, a “rare aesthetic” TikTok image slideshow captures the “coming back from swimming” aesthetic with images of wet hair, vending machines, a McDonald’s against a gray sky, and Schwarzkopf’s My Little Pony kids’ shampoo.
In naming aesthetics, you appoint yourself art historian of the mundane stuff that populates your life.
A couple of years ago, Rachel Tashjian wrote in Harper’s Bazaar, “I wonder if we’re living through a mass psychosis expressing itself through trend reporting.” The frenzy for labeling aesthetics and their brief, ecstatic proliferation online support her point. Still, I don’t think the phenomenon is frivolous, let alone deranged. In fact, it’s pretty fun and useful. The mania is not for things but for categorizing things — cataloguing what they mean and what hangs together. The pictures and phrases that, when combined, sing like a tuning fork. In naming aesthetics, you appoint yourself art historian of the mundane stuff that populates your life. It allows you to locate your Squishmallow collection or the dead suburban mall where you used to work in the same taxonomy as Rembrandt or the Bauhaus. Why the hell wouldn’t you overuse it?
The pleasure of calling things an aesthetic is also a social one: assembling a set of references to see what you and other people can collectively recognize as coherent. It’s the difference between saying “Your dress looks pretty” (vague, bland, barely a compliment, says nothing about the speaker) and “Your dress is giving Lana Del Rey 2014 girlie” (specific, thoughtful, heartfelt, affirms a shared social world). The fact that many aesthetics feel like hallucinations or don’t have a foothold in the real world doesn’t diminish them; their still being recognizable despite their obscurity is part of the magic. Most aesthetics will live and die undocumented, so it’s a thrill to see the tiny ephemeral ones preserved.
A fan of an early-internet aesthetic called Frutiger Aero writes that it gives them “a sense of peace and calmness … I feel more empathetic about others looking at Frutiger, in some way a connection to all other humans.” Sure, part of what they describe is utopian aughts internet design. But there’s also an older kind of satisfaction that comes from sharing a world with other people and filling it with stuff. Decoration, color, noise, gloss: the special things you agree are beautiful. Realtree T-shirts, Margiela Tabis, and lumpy silver tableware, or the white Monster Energy drink, a Cookie Monster snapback, and a vape.
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