Baseball. Apple pie. Fireworks adorning the sky in red, white and blue. Cowboy hats. Country music. These images conjure up a certain glimpse of American life, but is this image truly representative of what America looks like?
The image of America has always had a complicated history. Often, these symbols of iconography have ignored anyone outside of white America. To some, the flag is a symbol of joy and patriotism, but for others, it is a symbol of oppression and carnage. Recently, these aesthetics, founded from the roots of America, have been revitalized in a way that critiques our country’s history. Pop culture icons, especially from Kendrick Lamar to Ethel Cain, have used the image of America to critique what the American dream means and who it applies to.
The aesthetics of America are mostly derived from the clothing and lifestyle of working-class Americans across the Midwest and Southern states. Aesthetics that are associated with these rural areas are seen with disdain, and there’s a certain stereotype that is recognized. Some may be uneducated or not seen as equal to their coastal counterparts, but recent pop culture has begun to reclaim the roots of American aesthetics from the hands of oppressors.
Ironic displays of patriotism have been popularized. Country music is on the rise, with every artist out there taking their turn experimenting with the genre, and it’s not to celebrate the current American political administration, like country music in the recent past. No, it’s reconnecting to its roots and criticizing the America that has marginalized, oppressed and ignored its own people, with musicians leading the charge.
Through “Cowboy Carter” and its recent Grammy win of Album of the Year, Beyonce has celebrated and brought back attention to Black pioneers in the music industry and culture. Using her own Texas roots, she has criticized the state of country music that ignored her work previously.
After the Country Music Awards backlash against her performance of “Daddy Lessons,” “Cowboy Carter” was created. Using American iconography of cowboy hats and stars and stripes, Beyonce reasserts the history of Black country back into the forefront. It serves as a way to reconfigure the typical American’s perspective of what country music is and what it can be. In doing so, it challenges the standard country audience who rejected her in the first place.
In another instance, Chappell Roan speaks often about her Midwest roots, growing up in a small town in Missouri where queer folk were ostracized and bullied. Much of Roan’s artistry is influenced by her upbringing in middle America. Her recent Grammy performance, singing the beloved “Pink Pony Club,” features her and her backup dancers on stage adorned in country attire, sporting pink cowboy hats and metallic cowboy boots.
The attire is rooted in Western American culture. In other performances, Roan wears forest camo garments, a pattern that can be spotted by many people throughout the Midwest. Now, this camo pattern is incredibly trendy and spotted in everybody’s closet. But this style of camo used to have a much more negative connotation. For people like Roan, the print was present in the clothes of the people that she was bullied by. For a lesbian woman to make this pattern her signature, she has taken back the look.
Recent pop culture has found itself utilizing Americana aesthetics much more frequently. While times have been timeouts, the artists of today have found ways to express their own critiques in an ironic sense of patriotism. Alongside these critiques, it has been an opportunity to reclaim their place in the image of America.