Why Aesthetic Dressing Is Ruining Our Style

You know when you’re scrolling on TikTok, and your For You Page all of a sudden bombards you with a ploy to get you to choose between 4 different aesthetics like your life depends on it? Without any warning, you’ve been placed a crossroads, where you must choose who you are (on the basis of Pinterest photos), and you need to do it before you get bored of the decision-induced-anguish and scroll.

I’m not sure why this trend emerged, but in recent years we’ve seemed to feel more inclined to take notice of fashion trends, and instead of accepting them, we’ve decided to categorise them into specific aesthetics. These aesthetics aren’t just examples of different styles, they’re exclusive guides to how a “clean girl”, or a “whimsy goth” MUST dress. To deviate from this guide, would be to relinquish your membership to this world.

Your aesthetic doesn’t just determine how you dress either, it indicates how you should behave, how to style your hair, and essentially how you should be perceived. A clean girl should have her sh*t together, someone who is ‘preppy’ must be energetic etc. We create expectations of how to best adhere to this aesthetic, determined by how much of its criteria you fulfil.

A childish mentality

But why do we do this? To fit in? To have a more cohesive closet? To belong to a group? You can have the benefits of these things without limiting yourself to a specific TikTok-fabricated style that meant absolutely nothing 5 years ago! The culture of aesthetics that has been built by social media in the recent years is (at least in my opinion) completely pointless. We decide to restrict ourselves in fashion because a random person on the internet decided to name and advertise it as an ideal even though it’s actually unattainable.

It feels the same as when, as a kid, you decided what your favourite colour is and subsequently all your school supplies, your clothes, and your entire bedroom must be that colour. You couldn’t just enjoy the sight of something, it must become part of the description of who you are. But why is this mentally something that we still adopt as adults? Why do we feel the need to place ourselves into these boxes of aesthetics because someone on the internet decided that it needed to be classified?

Is it really such a crime?

It might not actually be that deep, but I do believe that the culture around trying to live an aesthetic life is a lot more effort than it’s actually worth. You can spend so much time attempting to make everything aesthetic, only to fall victim to the messiness of life. Not everything can be aesthetic, to paint it out like it can be, is completely pointless. 

To adhere fully to an aesthetic is just restrictive. It causes you to place yourself into a box so small that you can’t even fit an entire wardrobe in it. And to do it in favour of a cool Instagram seems stupid! Why are we so willingly entering a pit where creativity and individuality go to die?

How did this happen?

Though TikTok is partially to blame, it’s unfair to claim that it’s fully the apps responsibility. They did play a key role in its, and they definitely worked to spread it to the masses, but the tendency to choose a specific aesthetic, and then refuse to diverge from it isn’t new. TikTok just emphasised something which had already been around for a while. We can look back to the divide in 1950s style with ‘greasers’, ‘rockers’ and ‘teds’ all being prominent, but rarely crossing-over. All throughout history there has been a separation between different aesthetics, with the main rift being between mainstream and alternative. But nowadays, it’s not enough to be one or the other: if you’re alternative, you have to navigate grunge, goth, and too many others to name.

There has been a long-fledged tendency to want to be visually pleasing in the way that you fit under a very specific sub-section of style. But, even if it’s been around for a while, the reluctance to stray away from your chosen aesthetic has gotten out of hand with the emergence of social media making us feel like we’re not doing it for ourselves, or because we enjoy it, but instead because we feel like we have to appear in a certain way to our followers.

My issue is that if we’re strongly adhering to a chosen aesthetic, then we’re not allowing ourselves the creative freedom that is granted when you fall into the gaps between the categories. Anyone can be a goth, or a downtown girl, but you’re the only person who can possess your own personal style. Why sacrifice it to be like everyone else?

Death of creativity

Fashion is about expression, it’s about finding your style, and accepting the fluidity of taste. You may feel like your style belongs to an aesthetic, but ultimately, you still belong to yourself. You don’t have to subscribe fully to being a clean girl just because you like to slick your hair back, or a goth because you enjoy black clothing. Why limit yourself to a category so specific when the scope of what you can wear is so massive? The social media fame will never be worth the death of your creativity.