The Resurgence of 2014 Tumblr: Glamourising Sabotage and Sadness through Nostalgia

Ashoka Behavioural Insights Team

Published in

The Nudgelet

8 min readJan 30, 2024

By Muskaan Mir (UG 24), Illustrated by Anushka Vats (UG24)

[Trigger warning: moderate mention and images of eating disorders]

Have you ever wondered why 2014 Tumblr trends suddenly seem to be returning on social media? Somehow, a decade later, the era of glamourised eating disorders has become nostalgic enough to warrant a resurgence. After all, that’s how trends work. Humans can’t seem to let go of repetitive behaviours that bring them comfort and belonging, but what does that look like when these habits are rooted in cruelty and discrimination?

In this article, we’ll dive deep into the world of nostalgia and social media dynamics that have been prompting this phenomenon — where social media is not just a medium, it’s an enabler. How do we apply the narrow boundaries of carefully defined aesthetics to our broad, multidimensional lives? Are we all just caricatures, trying to achieve some imperfect virtual ideal? How are we responsible for creating these standards and why can’t we seem to let them go? And finally, is this really a big deal in the first place?

Our Love for Self-Deprivation

Most of us have experienced deja vu scrolling through our timelines these past few months. Artistes like Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, The 1975, and the Arctic Monkeys have all returned to the limelight. YouTubers like Dan and Phil are active on the platform again. The movie for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a huge hit, and the series adaptation of the Percy Jackson books is set to release before the year ends.

Taylor Swift for her song “Anti-Hero”

For those who were active internet users in the early 2010s, this feels like a reenactment of the golden age of Tumblr when everyone was participating in fandom wars and posting grainy photos of Parisian streets with relatable quotes over them. It can be reminiscent of a simpler time when the most heated online discourses pertained to Superwholock ships. From Nyan Cat to JustGirlyThings, it may be relaxing to mindlessly indulge in trends that would be labelled silly in 2023. But for every iconic aspect of this era exists a more problematic one that is now being revived under a new guise.

Many fashion columns exploring the resurgence of the indie/grunge aesthetic describe it to be the comeback of denim and leather jackets, black fishnet tights, and tennis skirts. The aesthetic of faces with cat-like eyeliner and cigarettes between red lips captured through amateur flash photography — or indie sleazecore, as Vogue calls it, popularised by the likes of Charli XCX and Lorde — is characterised by moody colours and simple silhouettes. However, the most indispensable element of this trend is a thin body. Even the most popular proponents of similar styles in 2023 like Maeve Wiley from Sex Education and Olivia Rodrigo of Sour and Guts fame are skinny; it is unlikely that they would embody the aesthetic so perfectly in the eyes of the public if not for their body type.

The glamourisation of the methods pursued to achieve the ideal body type is still upheld within this aesthetic, especially through trends like “thinspo” — another subculture from 2014 — that promote the kinds of eating disorders that focus on self-deprivation of food. Furthermore, many articles covering this phenomenon solely focused on the revival of the aesthetic and its relevance to pop culture, ignoring the concerning mindsets and lifestyle choices it promotes. The center of 2014 Tumblr fashion never lay in the grunge outfits but rather in the bodies they dressed. Social media saw the rise of concepts such as pro-anorexia, thigh gap, and thinspo; Pinterest and Instagram banned such hashtags along with Tumblr in early 2012, but that only led to loopholes like misspelled code words.

Goodbye Tumblr, Hello Twitter and TikTok

Popular Tumblr images from 2012

Since 2014, Tumblr has never garnered the same amount of attention to itself, but the trends popular on the website have carried its legacy onto applications like Twitter and TikTok. Enduring beauty standards have persisted in dominating the online realm, despite rising cultural trends that are increasingly supportive of self-love in mainstream media. The continued emphasis on smaller bodies in today’s body standards exists through the glamourisation of the Tumblr days. There’s an overwhelming amount of weight-related content on social media; posts are pushed by algorithms based on what people interact with most, and users can’t seem to get enough of them.

The optimistic nostalgia for Tumblr’s 2014 design has the potential to take over a person’s feed. This revival has transcended social media sites and entered the mainstream music landscape. G-Eazy recently released a song called Running Wild (Tumblr Girls 2), a follow-up track to his 2014 Tumblr Girls. Both songs contain the refrain, “I’m in love with these Tumblr girls / With skinny waists and drug habits.” It’s not just him who’s publicly reminiscing; the hashtag #2014Tumblr went from having 125.9 million views in January 2022 to garnering over 342.5 million views this year.

A video montage of the Tumblr era posted with almost 40,000 likes and over 15 million views on Twitter in the span of two days

The aesthetic has also transcended this hashtag to include more recent pop culture references, like Fleabag. The infamous protagonist of the show is messy and self-destructive, but her identity brand has been picked up in online circles to describe “dissociative feminism”, where women form and overshare a distanced narrative about the tragic experiences of their lives. The “Fleabag” era is the new “cool girl” according to Ion Gamble, the editor-in-chief of Polyester. “She’s a bit messy without trying, […] very dejected about the world and apathetic about her future. But also, on the flip side, very aware of her emotions.”

Phoebe Waller-Bridge for “Fleabag”

The trend “girl dinner” might have also turned into an aesthetic of a similar dark spirit, although originally not so. It began as a way to showcase how many women end up consuming a mishmash of random ingredients for dinner when they’re too tired to cook an entire meal. However, the diet culture side of TikTok was quick to co-opt this, showcasing meals whose sizes are more suited to toddlers. One meal even consisted of only frozen water. Eventually, “girl dinner” became about showing off how little you eat — even when it was meant to be about making lighthearted fun of food combinations resembling brunch-time charcuterie boards.

Examples of “girl dinners” from TikTok

But Is This Analysis Fair?

Nostalgia, especially in the wake of the pandemic, makes us look at our past through rose-coloured glasses, including a past when all we cared about was being unrealistically skinny, and eventually giving up when we realised the impossibility of it all. But even when we can acknowledge how messy we used to be — and still are — do we really care? At least the popularity of absurdist meme pages suggests we don’t. Often, we find ourselves condemning the accounts aiding the resurgence of Tumblr trends, but ultimately, we are the ones consuming them. Often embracing ironic humour, we send these posts to one another to make fun of the insane and unhinged food and fashion choices we sometimes make. Self-awareness is at the core of the new TikTok era.

Many of us also feel tired of having everything we consume online be microscopically reviewed and criticised, only for us to be deemed as anti-feminist and regressive. The resurgence of trends like the Tumblr aesthetic may just be a response to a phenomenon known as “empowerment exhaustion” where women are expected to be perfect all the time, and their flaws or imperfections are scrutinised disproportionately in contrast to those of men. Roxanne Gay, author of the collection of essays Bad Feminist, writes:

“I love babies, and I want to have one. I am willing to make certain compromises […] — namely, maternity leave and slowing down at work to spend more time with my child, writing less, so I can be more present in my life. I worry about dying alone, unmarried, and childless, because I spent so much time pursuing my career and accumulating degrees. This kind of thinking keeps me up at night, but I pretend it doesn’t because I am supposed to be evolved.”

A scene from Season 1, Episode 1 of “Fleabag” — the protagonist’s dialogue comes after her and her sister both raise their hands when asked if they would trade five years of their lives for the so-called “perfect body”

Skeptics often assume that the comeback of trends centering on unusual and dangerous eating habits signals complacency, but maybe most women just want to be left alone and indulge in some online banter about pervasive gendered experiences without being judged for it. Not all problems need politically correct answers. When women can’t escape being morally policed and being labelled as problematic regardless of what opinions they hold, they might as well establish an “offensive” niche sense of humour only they get. It doesn’t matter that there’s nowhere worthwhile to go or nothing productive to achieve out of questionable trends. Maybe there doesn’t have to be.

Works Cited:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010440X22000682

https://eagleeye.news/26514/showcase/trend-predictions-suggest-that-2014-tumblr-girl-aesthetic-is-making-a-comeback/

https://nuscimagazine.com/the-psychology-behind-trends/

https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/07/the-resurgence-of-the-2014-tumblr-girl-aesthetic-why-we-should-tread-with-caution/

https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2023/01/trends-sad-girl

https://www.hercampus.com/school/queens-u/a-message-from-a-former-2014-tumblr-girl/

https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/internet-thin-culture-is-back.html

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-the-return-of-2014-tumblr-means-for-body-image

https://marquettewire.org/4092141/opinion/niezgoda-the-harm-of-2014-nostalgia/

https://www.vogue.com/article/2014-tumblr-girl-aesthetic

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/55375/1/fleabag-era-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-dissociative-feminist