Core Workout
As days in quarantine pass, Hell and COVID are quickly becoming indistinguishable from one another and, just as I imagine one might do in hell, us inhabitants of this perdition have spent most of our time dreaming about what we would do if we were on the other side of it all. When this is all over you’ll quit your 9-5 and you can live off the food grown in your biodiverse backyard. One day you hope your love filled home is where you and your handsome husband raise your peculiarly Aryan looking children who have never heard of the internet and whose version of fun will be chasing chickens through the yard and growing pumpkins for the county fair. Perhaps this daydream, with its facade of eccentricity, brings on a small swell of pride; how unique you are, how different. Deep down the rebel in you hopes your extended family will scornfully mutter “hippy” whenever your name comes up at the dinner table, therefore exposing themselves as 21st century stooges who have clearly never practiced earthing. What you know that they don’t is that passé is the most modern thing you can be.
This post-post modern idea of your future self is yours to treasure; every day, as you slave away in front of the brain sucking computer machine, you can hold onto this special idea of what you will be. Unfortunately, I have some bad news.
You’re not special, this dream isn’t unique and the rural countryside you have in mind will soon become overrun with SUVs full of families looking to live out some permutation of the same fantasy and you have every “cottage-core” themed Pinterest board to thank.
Since 2010 the website has been offering it services to the aesthetic obsessed, similar to Tumblr (which in no way is an innocent bystander) millions of people can create their own unique exact replica of a mood board they’ve already seen. This is yet another instance of the World Wide Web proving that all people really want deep down is to live in an echo chamber of their own opinions. While in many ways, this is a flawed system, it is also extremely capable of indicating—and subsequently feeding—new trends. And in this way, cottage-core was born.
If the Pinterest algorithm is a lazy river flowing through a forest of repetitious content, it suddenly becomes rushing past any chance to indicate you can be into both flowing dresses reminiscent of the Italian countryside AND memes deriding your ever deteriorating mental health. Unsurprisingly, this coerced sameness leads many people down the exact same path and suddenly the niche cottage-themed aesthetic you’re copy and pasting onto your own life has suddenly been plagiarized into the lives of hundreds of thousands of others.
If this doesn’t sit right with you, you’re not alone. It can be shocking to find that the lifestyle your out-of-the-know friends believe you invented will be rudely introduced to the mainstream, thoroughly exposing your scheme. The sub being pried from the culture right before your very eyes. This can lead to a fervent splintering of the aforementioned schemers. Pinterest has become the 21st century’s Martin Luther.
Suddenly, cottage-core has become really-anything-core, so long as it’s slightly whimsical and worthy of family gathering gossip. The consequences range from bizarre to disturbing and I’m here to explain at least 5% of them to you.
Cottagecore:
Where it all began. Essentially it’s whitewashing and romanticizing agricultural life in the west. The fashion is defined by flowing dresses that seemingly beg the wind to blow them away. The color palette is decidedly neutral in case a splash of color would wash away the practiced carelessness.
We’re on “core” 2 and I’m already sad about the things I’ve had to google today. This aesthetic is earthy in a way even hippies wouldn’t approve of. They seem to like really worn clothes which is great for the environment so props there. I can appreciate the earth-toned aesthic as well, but maybe just not one that is so literal. According to a website that is real, Goblincore participants like to be “dirty”...which is something. Why dress like dirt when you can just wear it! Also do they call themselves Goblins? Questions even the internet is too scared to answer.
You knew from where we started we were going to get some fractal into Christian imagery. This is basically just Cottagecore if it was a religious cult.
Bloomcore/Meadowcore:
Subcultures are like caves. The cavernous open is just beginning, eventually time tempts the adventurer in us all and we begin to explore the hidden depths. Spooked by the growing popularity, some cottagecore devotees decided the only option was to move in deeper, hence ever more specific iterations... now I say specific but I’m not exactly sure I can tell what separates bloomcore from cottagecore. A lot of pastels and denim if Pinterest has it right.
Dragoncore:
I was really afraid I was actually having to break this one down but according to aesthetics.com, it’s currently under construction. Let’s just move quickly past this one. Also, I hope they know hoarding their wealth is not a wise choice when it comes to investing.
Of course many cores preceded cottagecore and many will come after. In the name of having some semblance of a life, I have chosen a deceptively narrow sample. There are plenty I’ve chosen to skip: cottagegore, clowncore, kidcore (NOPE), common core, etc. Really it would be impossible to explore them all and I have chickens to attend to.
