The Problem With TikTok Aesthetics

Written by Elizabeth Duarte

In the past years, we’ve seen an increase in trends that follow a specific aesthetic. Aesthetics that are trendy on the social media platform TikTok are Dark Academia, Cottagecore, Downtown Girl, Kidcore, and Clean Girl to name a few.

There is nothing wrong with adhering to a certain style, or “aesthetic” that suits your personality. It’s amazing that people are finding their personal style. Aesthetics are meant to display your personality through your lifestyle which includes clothing. Clothes are a great way of expressing yourself. Clothes dominate the culture around TikTok aesthetics. And it’s great that Gen Z is open to many styles rather than just one.

However, TikTok aesthetics can get problematic. Especially towards the environment, sweatshop workers, and people’s mental health.

As mentioned, clothes play a major role in aesthetics because clothes are a great indicator of your personality. But it feels like there’s a constant cycle of aesthetics that continually change over the course of a few months. For example, someone could follow the “dark academia” aesthetic (which is an aesthetic that romanticizes academia, intelligence, and boarding school. Think of Harry Potter or The Dead Poet’s Society) and exclusively wear dark clothing for them to just change up their style in a few months to move onto “kidcore” (an aesthetic that romanticizes childhood, colorful and fun clothes, and an excess of random jewelry) to then exclusively wearing bright fun colors. There is nothing wrong with deciding that a style doesn’t suit you. It becomes problematic when we engage with fast fashion to follow these aesthetics.

Fast fashion: “inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends.”

At first, fast fashion seems like a cheap and convenient way to get trendy clothes. This is true. However, fast fashion that comes from brands such as Shein, the biggest fast-fashion brand, harms the environment, steals designs, and exploits their workers for a profit.

When we engage in fast fashion, we’re engaging with corporations that actively damage our environment and put their workers at risk. These clothes that fast fashion produces are low-quality clothing that’s not meant to be long-lasting. They only exist to serve a trend before being thrown away. People are constantly going through clothing cycles, which means that when a new trend, or “aesthetic,” emerges, their old clothing from the previous trend gets thrown away. This constant cycle of buying clothes to be thrown away in a few months is damaging the environment because it’s producing more waste. And since there are constant aesthetics being produced, there is a high demand for these clothes to be made quickly. These quickly made clothes lead to sharp deadlines for the workers, causing them to work over 15-hour shifts a day as well as workers being abused and mistreated. These workers work at least 75 hours a week and, on average, 28 days in a month which violates labor laws.

Fast fashion plays a huge role in aesthetic culture because it provides people with trendy clothing for a cheap price. But the real cost puts these workers and the environment in danger.

The mental health problem

Aesthetic culture is fun to participate in. It’s fun to dress up in clothes and decorate your room in a theme that fits your interests and personality. But there is a dangerous side to curated online personalities. Some people feel pressured in choosing a specific aesthetic to stick with.

Shown above are two examples of this pressure to have and choose a specific aesthetic.

As these videos go on, the creators show their audience what their interested aesthetics are. However they both run into the same problem; they don’t know which one to choose. They both feel pressured to choose one aesthetic.

Why not be both? Why must we choose one single aesthetic, rather than both or all? Or even better, being yourself and dressing the way you’d like to. No labels. Why must we stick to one specific style? On Monday you can dress Dark Academia, and on Tuesday and you can dress Cottagecore. There aren’t any rules to fashion and your identity. And if you choose to stick with one particular aesthetic, then that’s great as long as you’re remaining sustainable and happy with your identity.

There’s nothing wrong with participating in trends. Trends are fun, exciting and they’re the staple of generations. However, it gets problematic when we depend on fast fashion and feel pressured to choose a trend to pursue. Fashion is meant to make us feel good with ourselves. It’s meant to display our personalities and interests. And when fashion doesn’t do this, it can get problematic.