When I used to get my hair highlighted, my stylist, Amanda, and I would end up having the same conversation over and over. During the last two years of the four or five years she had been doing my hair, she would tell me some of the funny things her other clients would request.
“She was in here asking for a shade called ‘cookie butter bronde’, which I’ve never heard of. The next day, someone asked to be ‘brownie batter brunette.’” This is the kind of thing Amanda would tell me, and we would laugh.
I had seen these terms online, but was surprised to know that they were being carried out into real life.
I had always just asked for “a full head of highlights”, but was now all the more curious about the seemingly new ways I could describe my hair. I began to notice these playful terms in other forms, though mostly still within the realm of beauty.
I saw a TikTok video of a girl getting “Moscow mule nails”. They were light brown and painted with reflective chrome powder, resembling the glasses used for the cocktail. A few scrolls later, I saw a video of a girl applying light pink lip gloss, saying that the color was “bunny tongue pink”.
So what’s going on?
At this point, everything began to weave itself together in my brain. It seemed that at this point, at least on the Internet, we don’t let products just exist anymore. Everything has a funny or fancy name attached to it, serving to increase its appeal or noticeability.
What’s more, all of these descriptors we attach to things seem to be things that people can crave. Cookie butter is delicious, Moscow mules can definitely be exciting, and bunnies are adorable.
While most people associate craving with food alone, in a broader sense, I think these terms have been developed to motivate craving as a general desire.
I even noticed posts online where food and drinks have been modified to fit this new “craving” mold. Nothing is just a latte anymore, but rather a “salted tahini honeycomb latte”, or an “iced matcha latte with strawberry puree and cold foam on top” (don’t be fooled — I’m not just a critic, I get one of those every day).
The point is that no item stands alone anymore without accompanying bows and frills. I think a part of this has to do with an issue we have with attention. The market is so oversaturated with products that to stand out to an audience whose attention is being pulled every which way, they can’t just want the item; they need to crave it.
Reactions
I’ve seen a variety of reactions to this issue. There has been a discourse in most comment sections of the Instagram posts, reels, and TikToks I have seen, highlighting products, that involves a back-and-forth between intrigue and annoyance with the product.
For example, on a video on TikTok I saw posted by an Australian hair salon, featuring a girl showing off her new “biscoff bronde”, the first comment said simply, “Biscoff bronde”? Another comment asked, “Will we ever run out of new, different blonde names lmao?”
Others didn’t even bat an eye at this word choice, flooding the video with heart-eye emojis and praise for the hair color result.
I have also seen reactions to the negative reactions, in which people come to the defense of either the product or its creator, asking why we can’t just “let people live” or let things be “fun and cute”.
I see both sides here. To be honest, I buy a lot of things. Most of them catch my attention because of their cute and shiny packaging. I also am known to love a juicy descriptor. Words like glossy, twinkling, or glimmering make my heart skip a beat.
Loving aesthetics makes life fun. I don’t think anyone should feel bad for liking things that are “fun”. I do, however, think the rate at which products are being manufactured and marketed is problematic.
There is a difference between using playful language for the love of aesthetics themselves and using it to entice an already damaged consumer group. I think we are headed in a direction where the hyper-stimulation needed to attract people to a product is becoming dangerous.
Will this ever let up?
I wonder if there will come a point in time where our rapidly advancing trend cycles finally combust. For the last few years, it feels like we have been right on the cusp of this happening, but I don’t know if it ever truly will.
Will there ever be a point where nothing is actually trending, because we have exhausted all of our products and our shiny ways of describing them?
I think the point at which these craveable products become an issue is when they actually influence people to consume things they otherwise wouldn’t.
While marketing products is essential, playing on innate human desires and inciting a craving (all for a frivolous beauty product or beverage) fuels the already destructive overconsumption our world is experiencing.
Another reason I think some people might be against this style of marketing is that it removes the magic from all of the material things that surround us. When everything is done up and special, what is actually special?
Everything is meant to stand out nowadays, and while I don’t know if that is necessarily a bad thing, it will inevitably reframe what is “special” in the future.