Clean girl aesthetic. Downtown girl. Coastal granddaughter.
If you’re on TikTok or Instagram, it’s likely you’ve seen makeup or fashion videos about these trends or similar ones that emphasize a certain aesthetic as a lifestyle. It’s a combination of dressing, behaving, and expressing yourself in a certain way, often connected to the products you use in your daily life. For example, the clean girl aesthetic emphasizes a minimalistic, natural looking makeup routine. As a result, things like smooth concealers and pinkish lip glosses are often promoted by “clean girl” creators. Coastal granddaughter and downtown girl respectively lean heavily on light blue and darker color schemes, so clothing centered on these colors are popular. The list goes on and on, with each aesthetic and its derivatives centered on certain objects vital to cultivation of the aesthetic itself.
At first glance, it may seem like the modern legacy of subcultures from the mid-twentieth century, but there isn’t much connecting these groups of people besides these products itself. It only takes a couple minutes of scrolling along videos of these niches, to realize that the products are the focal point, not some larger discussed shared interest or beliefs. These objects hold the power, not the people. A stark contrast to the formation and development of subcultures, but how did we get to this point?
The simple answer: commodity fetishism.
The idea that an object can hold power isn’t a new concept. For ages, humans have believed inanimate objects can hold some sense of power. Often, there is an innate sense of divinity, like with religious idols or totem poles. Anthropologists defined this idea as fetishism, and it was eventually this idea that Karl Marx borrowed in his own concept of commodity fetishism.
Prior to the nineteenth century, it was easier for consumers to see who and how a commodity was produced. People specialized in the cultivation, creation, and vending of certain goods, ranging from craftsmen to butchers. The value of the good would be attributed to the product itself alongside the work put into it. But Marx noted how with the rise of industrialization and capitalism, the real producers of a product become invisible–hidden behind the corporations and organization they work for–and the idea of production becomes far more abstract for consumers. It creates this divide between producers and consumers, and brings all the value of a good to the product itself. Suddenly, the commodity has an innate sense of power it didn’t have before, valued for what it can do for you, not the work used to create it, and good has been fetishized.
Commodity fetishization is present in most purchases, but easily identifiable when it comes to these trends. Think back to the clean girl aesthetic; the overall images and individuals who engage and post about the aesthetic cultivate a sense of organization and calm that people aspire to. So when people buy the products associated with it, they are reaching for these connotations. The perceived lifestyle is the value, and without the full picture, consumers believe the products have the power to help them achieve it. This idea is echoed in the way products are promoted even beyond these aesthetic cultures. Advertisements utilize imagery and people who supposedly “represent” the product to grow upon this perception, and thus grow desire for it.
It’s an extension of Marx’s ideas, adjusted for how social media has affected trends in consumer behavior. These cultures of aesthetics have brought forth something Marx hadn’t seen during his time, the commodification of people. When we fetishize these products, we implicitly fetishize the individuals associated with or promoted with these aesthetics, a dystopic realization about how we consume.
So where do we go from here?
Sadly, commodity fetishism is inherent to capitalism. It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially when it comes to finding out about products online, but trying our best to be conscious about why we may want a certain product we may realize we may realize we don’t want it at all. Rather longing for the idea of what it represents and what that could mean for us.