did you think about this first?

The pursuit of individuality in the age of aesthetic commodification.

“…it’s actually cerulean blue.”

Joan Didion’s essays: On Self-Respect and On Keeping a Notebook. Plath’s fig tree. Sisyphus imagining happiness. Morning pages. The Sally Rooney-Phoebe Bridgers universe. “Good luck, babe” or “Espresso.” Coke Zero or Diet? Matcha or Coffee? Film or Digital? Any lip balm–but specifically Summer Fridays’. Thought daughter. Moleskine journal, Muji .38 pen. A girl’s girl. A man written by a woman. Seven-step K-beauty routine, Gua Sha. Pilates princess. Gym bro. Leg day, upper body, core. What’s your personality type? INFP or INFJ? High-contrast or low-contrast makeup? Am I an autumn, or a dark winter? What core am I? What aesthetic are you?

Do you prefer oat milk over whole, or did you swing so far right you ended up back at whole milk because a TikTok said oat milk was spiking your insulin? Are your sambas white-and-black or black-and-white? Or did you buy the navy-and-baby-blue Spezials because you’re “not like the others”? What are your journaling prompts this month? When do you rewatch Little Women–November or December? The 1994 version or Greta Gerwig’s? Do you recite Laurie’s monologue to Jo whenever you see a vast stretch of grass? “It’s no use Jo, we gotta have it out! I’ve loved you ever since I’ve known you.” Or do you think of Pride and Prejudice’s declaration of undying love? Do you use AI as a therapist or an email writer? Or do you care about the environment? What’s on your TBR? Do you read “sad girl lit” or “hot girl lit”–is there a difference? 

Lately, I’ve seen “commodification” paired with the word girlhood and thoughts on the aestheticization of individuality–or the lack thereof everywhere. “Core” and “aesthetic” are tacked on the end of everything: “Outfit inspo aesthetic.” “Cafes [insert city] aesthetic.” “Journaling aesthetic,” and, at its apex, “Pinterest aesthetic.” And unfortunately, they’re accurate. I, too, have been seduced by photo carousels of hyper-curated cafes in whatever city I’m visiting or living in, and I eat them up every single time. I’ve read countless Substack newsletters, clickbaity SEO-optimized articles, and video essays dissecting online-birthed personas. Essays on “What is a thought daughter?”, “On girlhood” and the supposed erosion of individuality. I truly doubt we are commodifying girlhood by simply... talking about it or writing a Substack on it. 

I agree that the homogenization of individuality and the palatable reproduction of sameness can get boring. But is it really such a surprise? Or are we just glued to screens, watching bite-sized videos of the world 24/7? 

Taste isn’t some mystical act of divination; it’s deeply intertwined with our psychology and culture. Take the Devil Wears Prada’s iconic cerulean sweater moment. You might pick the blue sweater thinking it’s a personal choice–that your taste exempts you from current trends. But, as Priestly so graciously reminds us, it isn’t just blue; it’s cerulean. A color that filtered down from couture to department stores and, eventually, to clearance bins.  

the blue sweater moment

“It’s comical to think that you’ve escaped the fashion industry when, in reality, that sweater was selected for you by people you’ll never meet, in rooms you’ll never enter.” Although choices can be curated and fed to us, we have a choice in what we consume. It’s only passive if you don’t filter it through your taste buds. If you just eat oranges because they’re right in front of you, how would you know you prefer apples?

Mass reproduction of sameness isn’t exclusive to our digital-first, IRL-later era; it’s always been here. I’m not defending the bleakness of not knowing what you like or who you are, but I’m not convinced that watering down characteristics and molding them into stereotypes is the answer either.

How can we say we strive for community while rejecting the massification of certain things that might,in fact, lead to its creation? Isn't there a disconnect here? Somewhere in the sea of mass pretension and good intentions, have we missed the plot? Have we forgotten that two things can coexist without being immediately classified as cognitive dissonance? 

Masaru in Madrid

Picture this: Dinner in a dimly lit place with round tea lights and Clairo’s new ‘60i-sh album playing the background. A place you found on a cool girl’s TikTok that has just the right amount of interaction but hasn’t gone viral yet. 

Friend: “I just think we all need more third places.”

Another friend: “There’s this new place that opened. It’s a [insert potentially overpriced fusion of crafting + drinking natural wine] place.”

Friend: “Wasn’t that the place that went viral?” 

We dream up these kinds of spaces, but once we see a TikTok video about them, the allure is gone. The mystery is over–pull down the curtains! If we don’t have the luxury of sitting on impossibly chic terraces to people watch, or spending idle hours in cafes that refuse to provide wifi, there’s always… home? Community is built by showing up for each other, regardless of the space.

Are we really just passive bystanders to culture? Are we just feedback loops of familiarity ad infinitum? Or is there something we can gain from it? 

I recently made a Tiktok of “thought daughter book recs,” and as I was writing the caption, I felt my neck cringe and shivers dance down my body. Why is adding hashtags so unbearably embarrassing? #thoughtdaughter #bookrecs #litfic #literature #booktok. All these hashtags are also these weirdly specific microcosms we hope to puncture–a small hole to see the world through. A scream into a void with a string of relevant hashtags that might reach someone like, well–you. Branding myself feels repulsive, but it’s led me to some really interesting people. Take Nadia, for instance. While she lived in Vienna and I lived in Paris, our FYPs showed us each other’s content. Pictures of her matcha mug and my coffee mug, both lipstick-stained with variations of rosy tints, appeared alongside messy red journals. We started sending each other long, detailed DMs that read like letters–something I doubt would’ve happened if we hadn’t both tagged our posts with #booktok. Some of you might be reading this because of her, and for that, I appreciate you, N. 

There’s no denying the passive efficiency and convenience that has overextended itself into every aspect of our lives. We’ve collectively trusted algorithms that analyze thousands of signals from you to determine what type of books you might like to read or grace you with an ADHD diagnosis. 

We filter our world regardless of whether we believe we’re actively doing so. Every novel you read, the characters you admire based on their keen resemblance to your inner world, the comfort films you watch on a heavy Sunday night, the stories that disturb you enough to challenge your worldview—everything we consume can become a part of our identity. Then, you start asking the people around you: "Have you read this? Did you watch that? What did you think of it?" In the pursuit of not only a connection through the media we consume & but also a shared understanding. What you’re really asking is, “Do you want to know me? Do you understand me? I can try to understand you, too.”

My whole life, I’ve been called “different,” and to this day, I cannot tell you what they mean by it. I don’t feel like I am, quite the contrary. I exchange books with friends and share playlists with meticulous use cases, i.e., “play this when reading a dark academia campus MFA novel.” I tune in to strangers’ monthly favorites and video essays on pop culture. I like wearing red socks and baggy jeans because they’re a lot more comfortable, even when I have to pull the hems up to avoid a puddle, à la princess. Normal People is my favorite horror show, and my celebrity crush is Paul Mescal–exclusively in a Clairo hoodie and wired headphones. I listen to Gustavo Cerati on repeat when I can’t sleep, think vanilla ice cream is the supreme choice, watch YouTube videos with my lunch, feel self-conscious in Pilates, and scroll on TikTok a bit too much. 

I don’t think we can be reduced to what we like. Contrary to popular belief, wearing bows doesn’t automatically make us coquette ambassadors. The things we consume, yes, can become part of us, but they don’t have an all-knowing power to shape us into a single, polished version of an aesthetic.

A few days ago in Tarragona, I found myself gazing at the stars in a typical thought-daughter, nostalgic, sentimental-girl way–an unspoken requirement for joining the sensitive soul cult. I turned to a dear friend and asked, “Do you think I'm weird?” He quickly replied, “Yeah, but I think we all are.”  

For years, I tried to dissect my interactions, hoping for some kind of eureka that would explain why I was supposedly so different. Jotting down subtle notes on other's perceptions of me and analyzing the common denominators made me notice I wasn't that different at all. The times I was “manic-pixie-dream-girled” weren’t reflections of who I was; it was merely the dilution of the vastness of my personhood into a palatable drink you could name, package, and recognize. “I’ve just never met anyone like you” made me believe that certain parts of myself were only pleasing when diluted.

What truly makes us who we are isn’t our taste in music or our adherence to micro trends. What’s the use of having the same taste in music as someone, if you don’t know if they would return the grocery cart to its rightful place? Our taste may hint at our personality, and algorithms can leverage our brain-rot-doom-scroll to package us into data points for third-party agencies–but they don’t define us. 

The community we seek is often the same one we reject when we deem it too crowded. It's not cool to like what others like, to write embarrassingly specific hashtags, or to care too much about the order of a photo dump. Counting the “y’s” in a “heyyy” to your crush doesn’t feel very nonchalant. Once something is viral, it's already outdated. When just enough people are raving about it, or it shows up on a niche blog, we’re tempted to gatekeep. We want to believe we won’t be mistaken for a group but rather seen as a self. A hallmark of individuality, taste, and style dripping from every corner of ourselves.

The same people surrounding you have probably read the same thing, and I think you think they're cool and you’re right, they are. You can't water down an entire subset of the world just because they've read Rooney, have the same top 4 films on Letterbox, or listen to jazz house.

I don't deny that what we consume hints at who we might be–it’s just an indicator, a gentle correlation, not causation. We’re programmed by both nature and nurture. It’s the lifelong conviction of being true to who you are or, at the very least, to engage in the pursuit of it. In an age of aesthetic commodification, taste doesn't define us; actions do.