Cores, Aesthetics and The Death of Subculture
Clean girl is out, mob wife is in; or so claims the economy of the algorithm, which is dictated by a force so fast-paced, that it coincides with the average wear-time of a gel manicure.
The girlies are swapping out their Lululemon sculpt jackets for vintage furs, slicked-back buns with 90s blow dries, and barely-there makeup with full glam. However, in a world of ever-fluctuating trends—or “aesthetics” as they’re mostly referred to now—I don’t find it particularly jarring; it’s hardly a new phenomenon for the pendulum to swing from minimalism to maximalism.
It’s true the terms “clean-girl” and “mob-wife” can be eye-roll inducing (varying from exclusionary to classist, depending on what corner of the internet you ask), but they get the job done, they define an aesthetic with a clear visual reference. When we verge into the “slow life” or “cottage-core” territory I tend to get a little confused; are we moving to the countryside or just wearing prairie dresses?
Unquestionably, the “nichification” of our identities online has accelerated since COVID; being “locked down” forced us to play make-believe and dress up to cope with our immediate reality. We couldn’t escape to the countryside, so we settled with cottage-core outfits; a stark juxtaposition to the mundane and dystopian reality of government-enforced seclusion.
If you spend time on TikTok then you’ve heard the suffix “core” thrown around, mostly to define oddly specific identities that are more than a trend but less than a lifestyle, and often it’s witnessed almost exclusively online. According to UrbanDictionary, the suffix “-core” can be attached to another word for one of two reasons; to define a new sub-genera or to state that you’re part of a certain group.
This is a 2020s evolution of the subculture, but a little watered down. Subcultures have always been defined as a collective of like-minded people, expressing themselves and bonding through fashion, music, art, literature and sometimes politics.
An early example of a subculture began in the 1940s, when Latino teens donned zoot suits in LA, something then widely adopted by other BIPOC groups from the same area. This was not just a fashion statement, but a lifestyle and a cultural statement that was risky business; in June 1943 zoot-suit-wearing teens were stripped and beaten in racially charged riots in Los Angeles. Dressing in a Zoot Suit was a declaration, not something you did for a day to feel quirky.
When I was a teen in the early 2000s, subcultures were still thriving and had just begun to trickle onto the internet. Emos and scene kids did it best, littering their MySpace pages with morbid lyrics from their favourite bands, selfies shot from the same overhead angle and all donning the same back-combed, side-fringe that would give Gen-Z an aesthetic aneurysm.
These visual signifiers were there for a reason, they told outsiders where you belonged and allowed your tribe to recognise you as one of their own, but to be accepted you had to go all in—there was no half-assing. If you were to commit online you had to do so offline too, or risk being called a poser.
Tumblr bridged the gap between subcultures and online aesthetics, in the 2010s. Trends like seapunk, pastel-grunge, nu-goth and vaporwave veered farther from a countercultural movement and closer to an aesthetic-based trend, but they still felt more authentic than the TikTok trends we see now. There was a level of commitment needed too, since hopping from aesthetic to aesthetic was not looked upon fondly on Tumblr.
These identities were also still rooted in music, art and film; much like the subcultures of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Oftentimes they were modern interpretations of an already established counter-culture, like the Grunge movement of the 90’s. Again though, it always felt important to pay homage to history by doing your homework and listening to at least one Hole album.
In contrast, “cores” seem to be all aesthetics with little substance—they are there to dip the toe into, flirt with and move on before the next one comes along. Aesthetics and cores are filtered through the trend cycle so fast that fast fashion can’t even keep up and they have spawned the “micro-trend”.
Where subcultures created a fashion revolution, “cores” bring Jean Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra and Simulation to mind, i.e. we have replaced reality with symbols and signs, and reality, as we know it, is merely a simulation. Basically, we’re all posers. We’ve niched so far down, we’ve gotten lost in the sauce.
Essentially, subcultures exist IRL and cores are more of an online exclusive. Early internet subcultures still had a central doctrine of sorts, a shared interest in music, art or a feeling of otherness; subcultures existed as a countercultural movement, whereas cores and aesthetics are wholeheartedly mainstream, and tend to lack depth or substance.
Take last summer’s “tomato girl” aesthetic as an example. The premise was both simple yet hyper-specific; like the cottage-core and coastal grandmas of yesteryear, tomato-girl was a location-inspired aesthetic. Little Miss Tomato vacationed in The Meddittaranian, wore red floral-print dresses, donned headscarves and cat-eye sunglasses and probably spoke broken Italian—but nobody knows since she doesn’t exist outside of TikTok.
Aesthetics like tomato-girl, vanilla-girl and barbie-core are closer to cosplay than an actual fashion statement; they’re based on an already-existing archetype of beauty that adopters strive to embody, and oftentimes the visual references are signifiers of wealth or an ode to generic beauty standards, rather than radical self-expression.
Most of the time, these “aesthetics” are something you commit to for no longer than a 15-second fit-check, they’re essentially a costume.
You could argue that the aesthetics and cores of TikTok encourage people to experiment with their style since there is no expectation to commit to a single vibe. You can have a tomato-girl summer only to transition into a dark academic autumn at the drop of a coastal grandma hat—nobody will call you out on it because nobody is there to gatekeep a core quite like they did within subcultures. There is a distinct lack of community and belonging at the core of a “core”.
Perhaps subcultures have faded into irrelevancy. To quote Yomi Adegoke “If video killed the radio star, then it was the internet that killed subcultures”, and she might be right—since social media has made it easier to connect than ever before, perhaps the need to “find our tribe” through sartorial choices has become unnecessary?
Call me an Aging Millenial but I just can’t co-sign the rise of cores if it means the death of subcultures—there is too much value in going all-in. While experimenting with styles and trends can be fun, nothing will match the thrill of peeling back the layers of a subcultural onion and finally feeling understood.
I think about this so much. I miss belonging to a group and it‘s really hard to find your niche if there‘s no substance to all these aesthetics and cores. It‘s so meaningless - it‘s fun - but it really does not provide a sense of community as much as subcultures do. I think it becomes more difficult to signal to others what group/subculture you (want to) belong to. Loved reading your piece!!