“What’s her aesthetic?” “Aesthetic Get Ready with Me.” “I am making my school supplies aesthetic this year.” Holy crap. I’m overwhelmed and exhausted.
I think we have probably all watched many videos on TikTok tagged #aesthetic. I personally love watching someone go through their day or get ready in the morning. It’s interesting and relatively mindless, so it feels good to watch. What doesn’t feel good, however, is when I head down a rabbit hole of searching and scrolling, watching someone else’s life flash across my screen while obsessively comparing every aspect of my life to theirs. Why don’t I have a bathroom that’s entirely the same color? Why don’t my sheets look so cozy in the morning? Why isn’t my fridge meticulously organized and full of clear plastic containers? This is relatively easy to ignore. I can be realistic about possessions and the way social media idolizes them. But deeper questions always follow. Why don’t I have the motivation to start every day at 5 AM with a 45-minute ab workout and an hour of gratitude journaling? Why can’t I get to bed before 10 PM? Why don’t I see someone beautifully put together when I look in the mirror in the morning?
The answer to those questions, which I have had to be realistic in understanding, is that no one does. Here are my issues with the “aesthetic” obsession:
- It’s usually not real. No one’s room is always meticulously clean. No one never has a blemish. It is incredibly easy to fake this stuff in an edited video.
- It’s not actually about having a personal aesthetic or vibe. It is entirely about consumerism and having the on-trend things, the on-trend music, and the on-trend style. I want to see the way you actually act in real life! That makes you an interesting and unique human!
- It’s harming you. I tried making a day-in-my-life TikTok the other day. I think that’s why this is on my mind. It was not a perfect day, and my camera angles were all over the place. I didn’t have all of the good skincare products to show off or the cutest outfit. It was my actual day, so I don’t know how “aesthetic” it will end up being. But rewatching videos of myself and thinking about how they would make me look and whether they were aesthetic enough to be worthy of a video was exhausting. As women in today’s world, we don’t need anything else forcing us to conform or pressuring us to achieve a perfect image. It will likely cause more stress than happiness and accomplishment. If people in your everyday life will stop being your friend based on the decorations you use or the clothes you wear, why are they in your circle?
So no, don’t stop making your day-in-the-life videos. Don’t even stop making your aesthetic makeup ASMR videos. But please think about your individuality, and don’t lose yourself for the sake of your TikTok following. If the same people who watch your perfectly aesthetic inspiration videos don’t want to watch a video where you wear a unique outfit you love or one where you wake up in the morning feeling anything but grateful and ready to face the day, then they don’t really want to know you the way they claim to. Post the video where you have to do work you really don’t want to do or where you drop your phone in the sink while you brush your teeth, too! Your life is interesting, I promise, and that includes both the aesthetic parts and the “not-on-trend” parts!