“Without a ‘local’, fetishised or not, subcultures which exist entirely online lack the power to assert an identity in the face of competing claims to that identity… Where a physical locus is absent, the styles and tropes become free-floating, signifiers without signified.”
Fleetwood, P. (2017)
Aesthetics
Working with internet aesthetics, has been an ongoing aspect of my work, albeit usually a subtle hint, the last time I produced work which blatantly referenced to the aesthetical side of the internet was in Living the _Aesthetic (2019), which specifically mimicked and synthesised the pastel, cybertwee, vaporwave aesthetics that were on Tumblr in the early 2010s, as well as referencing back to early internet Y2K aesthetics. During the creation of this project I discovered that ultimately the internet caused the death of the subculture, with the youth of today flitting and flirting between multitudes of lifestyles and transient subcultures, which are in reality, purely pre-constructed structures which are driven by commercial interests that inject individualistic, egotistical, self-promoting data into social media. Reylea in Your Everyday Art World, makes a similar obversation to what I had observed:
“[O]ne way in which networks profit from the heightened mobility is by favouring casual, weak ties over tight, long-term commitments, so as to increase the prospects of fortuitous, happenstance encounters that lead outward from one communication nexus of group, enabling communication to expand by incorporating new connections while maintaining old ones as latent and re-activatable. Such conditions shed loyalties and identifications and become instead more mobile promiscuous operators who mesh seamlessly with the system’s mobile promiscuous operations.”
(Reylea, L. 2014)
Soft Girl
This observation has remained a nagging point on my conscious ever since, and made me want to look deeper at the current internet aesthetics and the subcultures linked to it to see whether that holds true a year on. Amusing the current subcultures that are deemed popular tie back to vaporwave and pastel kei aesthetics I was commenting on previously, albeit with a twist. Soft Girl aesthetics appear to have only really come to notice in late 2019 and is described as being an aesthetic and subculture which displays in the form of: “…cuteness, femininity, light pastel colors in clothes and many accessories. The subculture took a little from anime, VSCO Girls and hipsters. And the main platform for self-expression was the TikTok application.” (Mememaster, 2020)
Much like the pastel aesthetics popular during my late teenage years, Soft Girl aesthetics appears to use a muted pastel palette with homages to fairytales, ethereality and the early internet with references particularly to pop up frames and windows. A Guardian article furthers my observations on the transient nature of subcultures today, writing:
“The popular 2019 #softgirlchallenge, in which teens edited their videos so they appeared to spontaneously transform from grungy e-girl to glimmering soft girl particularly conveys how lightly Gen Z wears its group affiliations. These subcultures exist simultaneously as personas, styles, statements and jokes.”
Matei, A. (2019)
E-Girl
So beyond soft girl what are the other current popular aesthetic movements? As mentioned in the Guardian article a popular parallel aesthetic is the e-girl aesthetic. Again this aesthetic has strong ties to my own teenage years, in that a lot of the visual aesthetics of e-girl fashion, is a reinterpretation of the emo and scene subculture popular in the late 00s, as well as the skater subculture in the early 00s. However unlike these subcultures, the internet plays a key part in the persona of those who adopt the e-girl aesthetic.
The Independent describes e-girls as being a creation and existence “…almost entirely on the internet, with the name just a shortened version of “electronic girl”. The subculture typically consists of teenagers and those slightly older, and can be defined as people who spend a lot of time on the internet – using platforms such as Twitch, for live-streaming, Instagram, Discord, and most importantly, video app TikTok – to create an online persona.” (Ritschel, C. 2019) Despite being described in YPulse as being the antithesis of instagram influencers who have a facetuned appearance, the usage of heavy makeup distorts as much as the filtered equivalents, rendering a uniform cliché appearance of blushed cheeks, freckles, and bold punchy eye makeup, incidentally aspects of this look overlap with the soft girl aesthetic.
VSCO girl
“The aesthetic is named after the app which inspired it. VSCO is 2019’s answer to FaceTune, or Photoshop, or any other way of making sure your Insta pics are curated and stretched and smoothed to an inch of their lives. The app has become an adjective, with VSCO Girls defined by how they consume social media and what they post on it. As niche as it might seem, VSCO Girls have recently exploded on TikTok, an off-shoot of the E-Girls and Soft Girls competing with soft grunge to be crowned queen of the video sharing platform’s aesthetic hierarchy.”
Lanigan, R. (2019)
As Lanigan writes in i-D magazine, last year spawned not just Soft Girls but also VSCO girls, and much like the the other two aesthetics I have written this aesthetic seems to be a homage to the hipster subculture active my late teens and early 20s, with references and nods to the 1990s fashion of luxe sportwear and overall vintage aesthetic in an ‘effortless’ manner with natural makeup. Much like the term E-Girl, VSCO girls as a term was originally considered a form of offense, in that it was cliché, boring and basic.
Other aesthetics around and popular in the internet discourse at the moment include art hoes, and instagram baddies, however neither of these movements really reference back specifically to my teenage years, and are thus far haven’t been a focus in my shoots.
References
Figures
Figure 1 Murray, J. (2019) Of a new me (From Living the _Aesthetic). [Online] Available from: https://livingtheaesthetic.pb.online/ [Accessed 08/07/2020]
Figure 2 Instagram/@bbyboygav@binxsicle (2019) Soft Szn. [Online] Available from: https://stayhipp.com/internet/memes/soft-szn/ [Accessed 08/07/2020]
Figure 3 @cammydiehl (2019) TikTok: Updating old stereotypes pt: 3 ideas for the series? [Online] Available from: https://www.tiktok.com/@cammydiehl/video/6729612606887218438# [Accessed 08/07/2020]
Figure 4 Unknown (2019) YPulse: E-Girls, Instagram Baddies, and VSCO Girls: The Social Media Styles Influencing Gen Z. [Online] Available from: https://www.ypulse.com/article/2019/07/31/e-girls-instagram-baddies-and-vsco-girls-the-social-media-styles-influencing-gen-z/ [Accessed 09/07/2020]
Figure 5 (Deagreez/iStock) in Bellamo, R. O. (2019) Parade: Curious About the Whole ‘VSCO Girl’ Trend on Instagram? Here’s Everything You Need to Know. [Online] Available from: https://parade.com/924562/rheannabellomo/vsco-girl/ [Accessed 10/07/2020]
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Jasmine Murray Photography 