Romanticising Whose Life? The issues with “Aesthetic” Playlists

Recently, something strange has been happening with my YouTube recommendation algorithm. I keep seeing my home page flooded with strange playlist videos with hyper-specific titles and “aesthetic” cover images. From cottagecore to e-girls, “aesthetics” have been gaining traction as a way to define and discover your style: whether through music, clothes, culture, or any other part of your life. Roughly broken down, each genre of aesthetic is like a genre of music: it describes a certain body of cultural products, and breaks into ever more minuscule and small in-group categories. Some are attached to a specific feeling or location, but they all generally center around a collection of images, fashion, films, books, and music that all represent their ethos. 

Perhaps it’s because “Big Data” has been meticulously tracking my very studious google searches—”Gmail,” “Bcourses,” “great lakes surfing,” “chicken from surf’s up,” and “great lakes ice surfing”—but one of the most common aesthetic playlists I’m recommended falls into the nebulous categories of Dark Academia and Cottagecore. Dark Academia, as far as I can tell from research and simply seeing and listening to these playlists, is a subculture that focuses on studiousness and generally exploring life and its possibilities through—you guessed it—academia. Often featuring the gothic architecture of Western European Universities, brown sweater vests and old books, this subculture seems to romanticize the very thing we all love to hate: the higher education system. Cottagecore for its part seems to center around a quiet, pleasant life in a rural area, with lots of baking, farming, flowers, and Gunne Sax dresses. I’m sure by this point we’ve all seen enough e-girls and their related content to know what is happening there.  

Ranging from hours of classical music (with special emphasis on composers like “Pyotr Ilyich fucking Tchaikovsky” and “The god Beethoven” as one video put it) to Sufjan Stevens and some French ye-ye warbling, these playlists seem like great ways to expose yourself to music you might not listen to on your own, or in those carefully curated Spotify recommendations. For those not usually inclined (or forced by ballet or orchestra) to listen to classical music, these playlists seem fun. The imagery superimposed over the songs, combined with the often intricate titles and POV’s in the comments, make the experience overall much more accessible. Even cottagecore, e-girl, city pop, or “vibe-y” playlists have this feature; programmatic and algorithmic music curation, complemented by fantasy and imagery, tends to work better for exposing one to new horizons than other methods. 

The YouTube comment sections or tags of these playlists make this even more apparent. Users write, “this has inspired me to study,” “this helps me with my ADHD and focus,” “this has given me the inspiration to do __” (fill in the blank with any number of things: from asking out a crush, to making art or clothing, to moving, to getting a degree… I’ve seen it all), these comments prove how strong the association and desire for a romanticization of one’s life can lead to positive change—and more often than not, that exploration and experimentation are facilitated via music. 

So, what’s the problem? Beyond the irritation I feel when all my recommended content starts to look like something out of a Dead Poets Society (1989) blooper reel, these aesthetics tend to limit people’s experiences, just as they could be expanding their music taste. All of these aesthetics tend to have at least two problems in common with a few other issues thrown in, namely whitewashing and elitism. While I’m certainly not condemning any of the producers or consumers of these playlists, and I know for certain that many content creators and participants in these subcultures fall outside of the bounds of skinny, well-to-do, white women, I’ve noticed a worrying pattern. Many of the images posted to go along with these playlists are of thin white women, and just looking up the terms fills your Google images with a lack of diversity. The music itself is often, as stated before, usually filled with white artists, and even when it’s not, it’s often very limited to genres and singers within the Western world. The western world itself seems to be a focal point of these aesthetics; the “Oxford-type” university of Dark Academia, the western-prairie, Gunne Sax style of cottagecore, these all tend toward Western locales, music, and ideologies. Moreover, even when non-Western countries are included sonically, textually, or visually, they are often viewed through the lenses of Western ideology: be that exclusion, exoticism, or Orientalism. So, just as these playlists are opening doors to new artists and genres, they are also narrowing the playing field. 

The issue of elitism is often tangled up with that of a Western viewpoint. While the simple life seems to be praised and romanticized in certain aesthetics, like cottagecore, it’s true to a certain extent. However, the issues of who can live in these rural areas and what quality of life they have is never broached. While of course, I understand that these playlists are intended to provide an escape and simple backgrounds to some extent, the way we conceptualize them also reveals much about our values and ideologies. I’m not expecting an address of how cottagecore works in America and the recognition that much of rural life is based on class and racial hierarchy, nor do I think it would at all be productive to romanticize poverty itself (as I’ve seen some do), but I think that in any way we consume music and culture, criticism is important. And, as I’ve already said, there is so much music that could be applied to this aesthetic and could be explored that just isn’t; too often I see playlists full of French (often white) singers and indie (also often white) music dominating. 

Elitism is much more clear in aesthetics like Dark Academia and the interesting offshoot I’ve seen, “Royalcore”. While I think even the romanticization of monarchy is such a strange thing, the obsession with elitist standards (ivy league, old gothic schools, and royal balls) is evident in the imagery and titles of these playlists. The playlists themselves also all too often remind me of those insufferable elitist gatekeepers, who would constantly affirm the high status and importance of classical music. While classical music is certainly an excellent genre and continues to be very exciting, with people like Dev Hynes and Marian Anderson being some notable contemporary and historical Black musicians in the field, these playlists often only feature the music of already established, canonical, white (often racist) males.   

While this whitewashing and elitism seriously bothers me, I’m not here to critique the canons of classical music (which would take way too long) or argue about how seriously we use or internalize these aesthetics. As much as I like these elaborate storylines created with just a few still images, a title, and a great playlist, I might come to love them if they embraced all the amazing heterogeneity and diversity that these aesthetics could envelop.  

Written By Xia Jimenez 

Design by Jessie Yang