My Perfect Impossible Cottagecore Dream
In my house in Poughkeepsie, which I miss very much and can never return to, there are plants lining almost every corner. A massive jade commands the living room, a tarot blooms sweetly by the kitchen table. Three succulents once sat on my bedroom window sill, though they’ve probably died by now from the chill.
I never used to be a plant caretaker. Six months ago I couldn’t say the difference between a snake plant and a pothos, let alone tell you which seedlings need a north facing window. But I fell into the hobby — gradually, assuredly — after watching the joy it brought my housemates and not wanting to be left out. I never really vibed with my plants personally, but I stuck with the habit out of commitment to the community and the aesthetic. We are Plant Moms, I would think of myself and my friends each time I watered my cactus. We go to farmer’s markets. We are sensitive, sustainable women who do not subscribe to your archaic ideas of age appropriate pastimes.
I’m aware this fixation is nothing new — the Plant Mom wave, as well as several other agriculturally-focused trends, have become commonplace for many twenty-somethings. The house plant industry is now a $1.7 billion dollar venture in the United States largely thanks to millennial consumers, and initiatives like urban farming have never been more popular. The last year has also seen a renewed appreciation for “yeehaw culture” with the likes of Lil Nas X and Meg Thee Stallion popularizing boots, cowboy hats, and a rural, Southern aesthetic. And of course, our recent fascination with farm-based video games such as Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing currently serve as avenues for virtual world building through sustainable growth.
But perhaps the most relevant trend would be the recent resurgence of cottagecore, an aesthetic born on Tumblr that displays beautiful, rustic cottages as part of a larger romanticization of agricultural life. While the trend was created several years ago, it was repopularized after the coronavirus hit the United States. It’s easy to understand the trend’s contemporary appeal: many of us are quarantined in small spaces with multiple roommates, but who wouldn’t want to socially isolate in a beautiful cottage with a front porch, some animal friends, and a sprawling garden filled with food and lush greenery? Cottagecore imagery often features other elements of rural homelife — laundry drying on a clothesline, farm to table meals — for the full nostalgic experience.
I’ll admit I’ve found solace in my cottagecore fantasies while on quarantine; the photos are soothing and give me space to daydream. But I’ve taken to the trend in the same way that older millennials might find themselves browsing on Zillow for houses they can never afford: the images are comforting to me, if also sad and overwhelming. The lifestyle that cottagecore represents — having your own home, owning land, being self sufficient and living off your own labor — embodies the desires that most young people have and are scared, right now especially, we might never achieve.
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Before the coronavirus, I was a college senior with a promising future. Before the coronavirus, I planned on moving to New York City to follow my dreams. Before the coronavirus, I wanted to be a journalist. But that was Before, and almost everything’s changed.
The pandemic hit my demographic in devastating ways: over half of millennials have lost a job or had hours reduced since the virus hit the States and college students, who are inexplicably unable to receive stimulus funding, are now homeless and struggling financially at staggering rates. But the coronavirus has done more than put many of us in a tricky spot economically: it’s made us reevaluate our entire way of life. The dreams I had mere weeks ago of moving to Brooklyn with friends and finding work as a writer seem so foolish now that New York City is a hotbed of disease, journalism as an industry is dying as we know it, and I am hundreds of miles away from friends I used to sleep next door to. What this crisis has done, more than anything, is force us all to sit with the reality that the life that we had last month, and all the dreams that we had for the future, have effectively been changed forever.
This is where my cottagecore plant-filled fantasies come in handy — it’s so easy to forget your troubles while you’re watering flower beds or sipping tea on your scenic front porch. The content of my daydreams is quite mundane: sometimes I weave or I’ll harvest some tomatoes. These archaic, farm-focused delusions take me out of contemporary time and place. Though they were born out of a vague nostalgia for simpler times, they are fed by a growing uncertainty for my future, resulting in a fantastical utopia that combines the best elements of both Then and Now.
But there’s more to the dream than farms or the cottage itself — cottagecore is also deeply invested in notions of femininity, domesticity, and community. The images and tasks typically associated with the lifestyle, such as animal care, cooking or baking, and sometimes archaic crafts like needlepoint, illustrate the markedly effeminate ways that cottagecore has been aestheticized. Interestingly, the brand of femininity that the aesthetic is advocating for, one of a hyper-domestic woman who spends her time baking or luxuriating rather than working, is entirely antithetical to the third wave feminist principles that young people are taught to aspire towards under capitalism, once more demonstrating the inherently anarchical values that cottagecore is championing. Cottagecore further destroys typical notions of land ownership and heteronormative family structures through its rejection of individual property or resources: cottages, and the land and vegetation that surrounds them, are meant to be shared amongst loved ones. The aesthetic has been particularly popular among lesbian and queer folks, further illustrating the lifestyle’s appeal to those most in need of community.
The repopularization of cottagecore proves we’re in the thick of a generational nostalgia for a time that none of us were alive to experience. Which is why, in my fantasy, it doesn’t matter that I don’t know how to weave or harvest; I just know that’s what Cottage Mary would be up to. Our romanticization of farm life and obsession with an eco-friendly aesthetic can be seen in just about every facet of our culture, from the rise of sustainable influencers to the resurgence of farm-friendly fashion like overalls and bandanas to the enduring popularity of Old Town Road. In a time where it seems like nothing is permanent, we choose to take comfort in nature. We cling desperately to houseplants and farm fantasies when it seems like everything else will disappear.
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When Bernie Sanders dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race last week, I was devastated, if a little unsurprised. If the last four years have taught us anything, it’s that we cannot trust electoral, capitalist politics to bring us the change that we need.
Part of what makes this cottage fantasy so alluring is the opportunity to exist outside of capitalism. The ability to share land, to work for yourself instead of a large corporation, to find joy and fulfillment in labor, and to produce your own goods rather than buy them at a store are things that capitalism makes difficult for most people, but for younger folks especially. We are so exhausted by capitalism that we’ve become fascinated with any alternative, and so our generational yearning for a beautiful, agricultural, cottagecore existence actually represents our desire to live out our deepest socialist fantasies through community building, resource sharing, and an anarchical, sustainable lifestyle.
But even in our daydreams, we participate at arm’s length, and to the degree that capitalism allows us to. We admire the cottagecore aesthetic, we yearn to luxuriate on a sprawling farm, but we acknowledge the impossibility of these dreams. We know that, at least in our current reality, we do not live to pursue joy or work to find fulfillment — we live and we work to produce.
Like most who have fallen into the strangely vast universe of farm-friendly trends, I lean into cottages and plant care with a combination of genuine interest and a desire to be seen as a person who finds these things interesting: an environmentalist; a climate activist; a sweet, sustainable plant girl. Because capitalism has made this profitable, too. It has found a way to make the appearance of sustainability more valuable than the behavior itself, has convinced us that in buying a houseplant we are valuing our planet rather than contributing to a billion dollar industry that could give a shit whether Earth flourishes or dies. Which is why when I think of my house in Poughkeepsie, I don’t miss those succulents on my window sill, but I miss the identity that they gave me: one of a woman who could keep things alive.
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About a year ago, I was having this really good talk with my friend Maimuna, and we were debating whether or not heaven exists and what it would look like. And I said something like, “I think heaven would just be me and all my friends in a meadow somewhere, and the sun is shining, and there’s fruit and weed and good music and everyone’s happy.” And Maimuna just kind of looked at me and laughed. They told me I need to dream bigger. “That’s more like heaven on Earth,” they said.
And they were right.
I miss so much about my old life. I miss hugging my friends. I miss Poughkeepsie sunsets. Sometimes, I think about how so many of the things that I long for — going out to eat, the Metro North ride I’d take to my internship in Manhattan — are tied to capitalism and become terrified of how much I have unknowingly sentimentalized the very systems that have put us in this crisis in the first place.
I want to live in a world where owning a cottage and having a garden are not far-fetched fantasies. Capitalism has made us think small and we deserve more. In the end, it might be a good thing the Old Ways are burning because that life wasn’t big enough to hold all of my dreams.
