Manufacturing a Personality: The Lost Art of Being Intentional
By Nandini Shah If you’re chronically online like me, you know there’s no escaping content creators who pick a new aesthetic to imitate every few weeks. Even creators who claim to be ‘fashion girlies , ’ stage their personality by doing hauls of the latest micro-trend s and creating a fake ‘everyday’ life . They successfully package personalities within things like their bedrooms, airport security trays and handbags, ensuring their comment sections are filled with demands for links. The beginning of the year saw the ‘messy girl’ aesthetic become popular. This trend was characterised by smudged eyeliner, frizzy hair, and flyaways , to represent the clutter and chaos of everyday life ; a rejection of the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic. However, creators ignored the discourse and sentiment of authenticity behind the trend and sought ways to curate the perfect image of an unaesthetic life. This gave rise to numerous TikToks of messy rooms with carefully arranged coffee cups, candles,